THE GERMANS 

IN 

COLONIAL TIMES 



BY LUCY FORNEY BITTINGER 

AUTHOR OF " MEMORIALS OF THE REV. J. B. 
BITTINGER" and of " THE FORNEY 
FAMILY OF HANOVER, PA." 




PHILADELPHIA AND LONDON 

J. B. LIPPINCOTT COMPANY 

I g o I 



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Two Copies Receivco 
DEC 8 1900 

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FOREWORD 

Singularly little is known of the magnitude of the 
German emigration to America in colonial times. The 
very fact of such a movement is commonly unknown to 
the American at the present day ; and even the de- 
scendants of these Teutonic pioneers are often ignorant 
or — more inexcusably — ashamed of their progenitors, 
and have sought by anglicizing their names and lightly 
passing over the fact of their descent from " Dutchmen" 
to conceal the wide and deep traces which this move- 
ment has left on American life. Yet this Volkerwan- 
derung (for it merits the name) brought to our shores in 
the century before the Revolution one hundred and fifty 
thousand people, one-half of the population of the great 
province of Pennsylvania, besides large settlements in 
the provinces of New York, the Carolinas, Virginia, 
Maryland, Georgia, not to mention the small and ill- 
fated colonies of Law on the Mississippi and those in 
the State of Maine. Nor is their history lacking in 
interest, containing as it does the peaceful picture which 
Whittier has immortalized in his "Pennsylvania Pilgrim ;" 
the self-sacrifice of the Moravian missionaries among the 
Indians ; the dramatic fire of Muhlenberg throwing off 
his pastor's gown for a Continental uniform and calling 
to his flock that "the time to fight had come ;" and the 
tragic resolution with which the embattled farmers of 
Oriskany held back, with the sacrifice of their own lives, 

5' 



Foreword 

the English rifle and Indian scalping-knife from their 
Mohawk Valle}' homes. Or we may turn to the quaint 
Rosicrucians, the hermits of the Wissahickon, or the 
cloisters of Ephrata for a life almost unknown among 
the more practical English colonists. 

If we would sup full of the horrors of war, pestilence 
and famine, or religious persecution with stake and fire 
and noisome prison, with midnight flight for conscience' 
sake, we can find these told in simple pathos in the 
stories of the Palatines of the Rhine, the Mennonites 
of Switzerland, the INIoravians, or the tiny sect of the 
Schwenkfelders. If we would meet with good men or 
great, we may see here the gentle Pastorius, first pro- 
testant against American slavery, or Conrad Weiser, 
whose adventurous life was largely filled with embassies 
to might}' Indian chiefs and nations, whom he held back 
from war from the white men's frontier, or, last but not 
least, William Penn, whose might}' figure dominates the 
histoiy as its counterfeit presentment does the city he 
has builded beside the Delaware. And indeed " time 
would fail us to tell" of the many people and incidents, 
interesting, pathetic, humorous, or containing in them 
the germs of our present American development, which 
fill the annals of those " Pennsylvania Germans" and 
their kin in many States, whom the New England histo- 
rian, Parkman, slurred over with the description, " dull 
and ignorant boors, which character their descendants 
for the most part retain." 

How many even of these same descendants know 
tliat to this people belong, by ancestn,' more or less 
remote, some of the first scientific men of America, 
such as the Muhlenbergs, Melsheimer, the ** father of 

6 



Foreword 

American entomology," Leidy, and Gross, the great sur- 
geon ; Herkimer, the hero of Oriskany ; " Moll Pitcher," 
the heroine of Monmouth ; Post, the Indian missionary, 
to whom Parkman liimself pays a noble tribute ; Hecke- 
welder, the Moravian lexicographer of the speech of the 
Delawares ; Armistead, the defender of Fort McHenry 
in the war of 1812, whose flag, "still there," inspired 
the "Star-Spangled Banner;" Barbara Frietchie ; and 
General Custer? Surely this people merit that some 
slight account be drawn from the mostly unknown 
books and documents where they have for years re- 
posed, known only to antiquarians and often veiled 
from English readers by the German language in 
which many of the best and most valuable are written, 
and be given to the English-speaking world of America. 
Such is the purpose of the present work. 



CONTENTS 

CHAPTER PAGE 

I Conditions in Germany which led to emigration ii 

II PENN'S visit to GERMANY 22 

III Germantown 26 

IV The labadists in Maryland 36 

V The woman in the wilderness 42 

VI German valley, new jerskv 52 

VII Kociierthal's colony 58 

VIII The great exodus or the i-alatinks 61 

IX Pequae and the mennonites 93 

X The dunkers and ephrata 98 

XI The schwenkfelder and Christopher dock ... 105 

XII The progress of settlement in the valley of 

VIRGINIA AND IN MARYLAND II4 

XIII The GERMANS IN south CAROLINA 121 

XIV German colonization in new England 130 

XV The salzburgers in Georgia and the Pennsylvania 

GERMANS IN NORTH CAROLINA 142 

XVI The German press 152 

XVII The Moravians 168 

XVIII Conrad weiser and the frontier wars 184 

XIX The "royal American" recument 206 

XX The redemptioners 215 

XXI The Germans as pioneers 230 

XXII The Germans in the revolution 235 

XXIII "The rear-guard of the revolution" 277 



THE GERMANS IN COLONIAL 
TIMES 

CHAPTER I 

CONDITIONS IN GERMANY WHICH LED TO EMIGRATION 

The large emigration of Germans to America and es- 
pecially to Pennsylvania in colonial times seems on first 
examination a mysterious phenomenon. The Germans 
were aliens in language among the mainly English-speak- 
ing colonists ; were obliged to undertake a long and 
toilsome journey before reaching the ocean over which 
they must sail for weeks and months, amidst the greatest 
hardships and dangers, before they could even attain to 
their desired haven ; their own government, so soon as 
the size of the movement attracted attention, did all in 
its power to restrain it, and the PLnglish provincial author- 
ities received the foreigners by no means with open arms ; 
yet the cry was still "They come." The well-known 
energy, resolution, and fondness for emigration charac- 
terizing the Germans of earlier times — the merchants 
of the Hansa, whose flag was on every sea and whose 
warehouses and trading-posts dotted every land and^ 
strand — had been crushed out of the seventeenth- 
century Germans by the fearful peine forte et dure of 
the Thirty Years' War.'' So the Americans who saw 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

this tide of strangers rising on their shore were natu- 
rally surprised, and the few of their descendants who 
know the proportions of the early German emigration 
to America are still astonished at it. But a slight 
knowledge of the condition of Germany at the time 
that the emigration took its rise and for some genera- 
tions previous will explain it. 

This movement had a twofold cause : first in point of 
time as of importance, a religious motive ; and secondly, 
a social or material one. That the religious was pre- 
dominant may be seen by the character of the emigra- 
tion, which at first and for two generations consisted 
entirely of the sectaries who were persecuted in Germ.any 
by state and church. And it may also be proved by the 
rise and course of the emigration which was begun and 
fostered by such men as Penn the Quaker and his 
Mennonite and Pietist friends and religious acquaint- 
ances. 

The Rhine country, from which such an overwhelming 
proportion of the colonial German emigrants came that 
it may be almost exclusively considered, was the home 
of Mysticism and Pietism, two most elastic designations, 
which include phenomena as various as the wild and 
immoral fanaticism of the prophets of Miinster and 
the peaceful purity of Tersteegen and his little circle of 
pious friends. Mysticism had had its home on the Rhine 
ever since " Master Eckart" taught a strange mystical 
pantheism among the Brethren of the Free Spirit, and 
Tauler and the author of the "Theologia Germanica" 
preached a self-surrender as complete as that which 
Loyola exacted from his " Company of Jesus." This 
mysticism flowered later into the practical endeavors of 

12 



Conditions in Germany which led to Emigration 

Gerhard Groot and the " Brethren of the Common 
Life" to instruct youth in their schools, and one of their 
scholars was th.it Thomas of Kempen who wrote the 
"Imitation of Christ," still beloved among us. The final 
result of this movement was the Reformation. 

But the Reformation did not go far enough to satisfy 
many of the pious souls looking for more or different 
light than Luther and Zwingli found to break forth from 
God's word. Nor did it content the longings of many 
among the Swiss compatriots of Zwingli who felt the 
danger of his union between church and state or the 
coldness of his somewhat rationalistic views of the 
sacraments. So among the many scattered circles who 
fed their spirits upon the mystical writings of Boehme, 
Tauler, and Swedenborg, or the hidden people who 
proudly retained in secret the pure, early Christianity 
of the Waldenses, lived, amid continual suspicion and 
persecution, the beliefs which crystallized here and there 
into "the Sects." These flourished mainly among the 
lower classes, those who had wished during the Refor- 
mation to abolish nobles and kings along with priest- 
hood, and these social and socialistic views naturally 
made them obnoxious to the authorities. "The perse- 
cuted Sects" they were designated, and persecuted 
they were indeed : unto death by fire and sword and 
drowning in earlier times ; then, as civilization advanced, 
through imprisonment, harassments by the authorities, 
and forcible conversions ; and, finally, by all sorts of 
worrying attacks, such as spared life and limb but left 
little else. No wonder that "as soon as an asylum was 
provided them, they flocked to it, one little company 
after another of the sectarians braving the dangers of 

13 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

the long, trying voyage and the hardships of the un- 
known wilderness to find the precious jewel of religious 
freedom. 

In the midst of the religious intolerance and persecu- 
tions of the century after the Reformation fell upon 
Germany the unimaginable and indescribable horrors of 
the Thirty Years' War. It is difficult to call up to one's 
mind what this event was. Many portions of Germany 
became uninhabited wildernesses ; many of the miserable 
people became in the extremity of their distress robbers, 
murderers, and even cannibals. The free peasants were 
degraded to serfs, the rich and energetic burghers became 
narrow-minded shopkeepers, the noblemen servile cour- 
tiers, the princes shameless oppressors. Of the rich, 
blooming land, full of trade and learning and refinement, 
was left a wrecked country, the sites of burnt villages 
overgrown by the forests, tiny towns amid the ruin of 
their former greatness, and a handful of broken-spirited 
people creeping fearfully about the work of earning a 
bare existence. It was a full generation after the war 
before the exhausted and demoralized nation could stir 
itself to an interest in those spiritual things which were 
seemingly all that were left to it. 

From desolation and barbarism, persecution and op- 
pression on earth, the Germans looked to heaven. The 
churches, — and by this I mean the three "tolerated 
confessions" (Lutheran, Reformed, and Catholic), — at 
least the Protestant churches, had fallen into a state 
of formalism and indifference to religious things, while 
retaining a vivid and often virulent interest in orthodoxy 
and the stiffest scholastic theology. The use of the 
sacraments had become in many places a magical cere- 

14 



Contlirions in Germany which led to Emigration 

mony. The youth were not instructed, the openly scan- 
dalous in Hfe neither admonished nor excluded from the 
church. Men with none of that preparation of heart 
which our forefathers quaintly called " experimental re- 
ligion" were ordained and ministered to congregations, 
famished for plain teaching of duty, scholastic treatises, 
or furious polemics against the sins of sectarianism, the 
dangers of good works, and the wickedness of prayer- 
meetings. It is not strange that many simpl^e and godly 
people went off into the extravagances of the various 
mystical coteries where the Bible was at least studied, 
and, after a most singular fashion, expounded. The 
Rhine country was full of little circles of devout, if ig- 
norant, people, who listened to some self-constituted 
minister, — perhaps a pious and sensible mystic like 
Tcrsteegen, perhaps a wild dreamer like the " Inspired 
Saddler" Rock, a learned lady like Eleanora von Merlau, 
or an immoral fanatic such as Eva von Buttlar. 

But, fortunately for these ofttimes deluded good peo- 
ple, there arose the movement called or nicknamed 
Pietism, given a direction by the devout, learned, and 
lovable Spener, whose principle was " that Christianity 
was first of all life, and that the strongest proof of the 
truth of its doctrine was to be found in the religious 
experience of the believing." It embraced among its 
leaders — along with the fanatical cranks who are the 
curse of any movement which stirs men's enthusiasm — 
men like Gottfried Arnold, the church historian, the 
equally learned Professor Thomasius, the noble and 
benevolent Francke, the founder of the Orphan House 
of Halle, and his son, the benefactor and guide of the 
neglected Lutherans of Pennsylvania. The Pietists 

15 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

struggled not only against the dry and dead theology of 
the time, but for the purity and simplicity of the Ger- 
man language against the barbarous scholastic German 
of the time. The whole Pictistic movement was earnestly 
directed to the betterment of mankind, materially as 
well as spiritually. It found its field, in contradistinction 
to the mysticism of the "plain people," among the 
upper and cultivated classes, and many names of those 
rich and noble and mighty according to this world adorn 
its roll. The Pietists stood like the Deists for freedom 
of thought in religious matters and against the mental 
oppression which everywhere existed ; both appealed 
to the New Testament from the decisions of councils 
which in every case the authorities desired to maintain. 
The Collegia or conventicles of the Pietists were nothing 
but simple assemblies as harmless as a Methodist class- 
meeting, where the members appealed to the Scriptures 
in the original from the pedantic systems of the theo- 
logians. This new school was strong and pure so long 
as it preached free investigation, liberty of thought and 
conscience, and rectitude of life. The leaders were noble 
men and did a noble work, and not the least of their 
services to humanity was the part which they took in 
the colonization of the New World, where freedom of 
conscience existed. It is to the Pietists and their un- 
known and often unacknowledged brethren, the mystical 
and persecuted sectaries, that we owe the inception of 
the early colonial emigration of Germans to Pennsyl- 
vania. 

The second cause of the colonial German emigration 
was the social and political condition of Germany, and 
this may be summed up as deterioration in ever}^ way. 

i6 



Conditions in Germany which led to Emigration 

The Rhineland recovered more rapidly from the ravages 
of the Thirty Years' War than other parts of Germany, 
but misgovernment and reHgious intolerance were more 
severely felt there than in other sections of the country. 
To the reader of its depressing history it finally becomes 
a wonder, not that so many of its inhabitants emigrated, 
but that any one had the courage and the truly German 
perseverance to remain behind in the miserable land. 
The rulers sought only their own advantage and pleasure, 
the prosperity of their subjects was not at all in their 
thoughts. Wars were almost unceasing : French devas- 
tations and "reunions" along the Rhine, wars with the 
Swedes and Turks, the two dynastic wars named of the 
Spanish and Austrian successions, the Seven Years' War, 
and unceasing feuds among the little principalities. 
"The peasant did not conceive of a time in which there 
was not war." They must have prayed with a special 
feeling the pathetic petition of the litany : " Give peace 
in our time, O Lord : because there is none other that 
fighteth for us but only Thou, O God." All Southwest 
Germany was as full of misgovernment as of sectarian- 
ism, " filled with tiny principalities, old religious founda- 
tions, — secularized or still remaining, — free cities of the 
moribund empire and even free villages ; counts, princes, 
and lords of all kinds, who caricatured Louis XIV. some- 
times by dozens to the square mile and kept the fruitful 
land in an artificial condition of perpetual exhaustion." 
This unhappy section of Germany included first in 
an unfortunate pre-eminence the Rheinpfalz or Rhenish 
Palatinate ; Swabia, Wiirtemberg, Silesia, and the many 
little principalities between Bavaria and Austria. The 
Rhenish Palatinate was a model of these badly ruled 

2 17 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

and plundered principalities, and so many of its inhab- 
itants fled that in America all German immigrants were 
called Palatines, and we even encounter in colonial 
records that nondescript "A Palatine from Holsteyn." 
When, after the Thirty Years' War, the elector Karl Lud- 
wig returned to his desolated dominions, he found but 
a fiftieth part of the inhabitants remaining, and all his 
efforts (for he was a good ruler taught in the hard school 
of personal adversity) to restore prosperity were frus- 
trated by the continual wars of his time. In 1668 was 
war with the neighboring Duke of Lorraine ; in 1673 
the invasions of the Most Christian King, Louis XIV., 
began without declaration of war or any excuse save 
that he desired a desert made to protect his frontier. 
In the intervals of peace were carried on the shameless 
reunions by which territory was taken for France on the 
flimsiest pretexts of law. During the various campaigns, 
Mannheim and Heidelberg were burnt ; two separate 
efforts, four years apart, were necessary to destroy the 
strong and beautiful castle, to-day " majestic though in 
ruin ;" at Speyer the graves of the old Kaisers were 
broken open and their dust scattered by the French 
soldiers. Worms was burnt "on Whit-Tuesday," the 
French military bands playing dance-music while the 
city and its old cathedral were reduced to ashes. From 
this destruction Worms and Speyer have never recovered, 
and traces of the work of Louis's robber bands are still 
apparent ; all the villages and towns between Heilbronn 
and the Lower Rhine are new, with no remains left of 
their historic past. 

To these outward afflictions of the Palatinate was now 
added religious intolerance. The succeeding elector, Jo- 

18 



Conditions in Germany which led to Emigration 

hann Wilhelm, was a Catholic, and endeavored by taking 
advantage of the differences between the Lutherans and 
the Reformed to make the whole land of his own faith. 
Under his orders children were taken from their parents 
to be brought up Catholics. In some cases his Prot- 
estant subjects were driven away, sometimes their 
churches taken from them by force, or they were forci- 
bly converted under pain of fines impossible to pay. 
In some places they were hunted into church by soldiers 
and the host crammed into their mouths. The Hugue- 
nots and Waldenses who had been invited by Karl Lud- 
wig to take asylum in the Palatinate after the revocation 
of the Edict of Nantes were turned out and went with 
other Palatines to America. The Reformed were made 
incapable of holding civil office, the stipends were with- 
drawn from preachers and teachers, and, following the 
illustrious example of Louis XIV., they were subjected to 
the dragonnade. But the Protestants stood firm and 
almost none became Catholics. The elector meanwhile 
lived away from his country and spent his subjects' 
money gayly in private theatricals, buildings, and art 
collections. 

His successor, Karl Philip, was one of the worst rulers 
that the Palatinate ever had, though he showed some 
little consideration for his subjects ; some of the feudal 
services were remitted in 1735 in order that the peasants 
might till their fields, but the despairing people refused 
to accept this, because they knew that all their crops 
would be taken from them by the invading French. The 
elector received an indemnity from the invaders, but 
retained it in his own pocket. The court was incon- 
ceivably costly — the master of horse, for instance, had 

19 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

one hundred and eighty persons under his orders alone, 
while other officials whose titles and rank are alike un- 
translatable and incomprehensible to us had as many or 
more. There were mounted life-guards, falconers, court 
musicians, and court architects besides. 

It might have been supposed that this was the high- 
water mark of extravagance, but Karl Theodor, whose 
long reign filled out the eighteenth century, was the w^orst 
of all under whom the miserable Palatinate suffered. The 
elector was shamelessly in the pay of France, and under 
the influence of the Jesuits, like most of the Simmern 
branch of the Palatinate house ; bribery Avas open in the 
government ; in the court, avarice, extravagance, and 
immorality. He forbade his loving subjects to leave his 
well-governed land, where he destroyed the peasants' 
crops and fields with his magnificent hunts. His court 
far exceeded in expense and extravagance that of his 
predecessor. This magnificent court, with innumerable 
fine rooms, stables with hundreds of horses, gardens, and 
orangeries, was the resort of countless adventurers who 
were fed by scores at the monarch's table. Meanwhile, 
every nineteenth inhabitant was a beggar ; and the result 
of the census was concealed, for it showed a progressive 
diminution of population. 

Wiirtemberg, which, next to the Palatinate, sent most 
emigrants to America, offers a replica of these condi- 
tions. In Wiirtemberg the French robbers came twice, 
in 1688 and 1693 ; the Spanish Succession War brought 
desolation to the country and a three days' plundering 
to the city of Stuttgart ; but from the beginning of the 
eighteenth century to its end Wiirtemberg had the ad- 
vantage over its neighboring country, that no foreign 



Conditions in Germany which led to Emigration 

army entered it. Its dukes for a hundred years, how- 
ever, were merely bad imitations of a wretched model in 
their endeavors to equal the oppressions, extravagance, 
and wickedness of the French sovereigns. Karl Eugen 
of Wiirtemberg, whose treatment of Schiller and the 
poet Schubart has made him notorious, had two thou- 
sand courtiers, the finest ballet and opera out of Paris, 
increased the taxes of his subjects threefold, and drove 
them by thousands to America. In Baden reigned 
another imitator of Le Grand Monarque, Karl Wilhelm, 
the builder of Karlsruhe ; his people emigrated to New 
York and also to Pennsylvania in goodly numbers. 

Truly an unpleasant and disheartening picture to 
contemplate, — these gilded princelings, these crushed 
people solacing themselves in their misery with wild re- 
ligious dreams or subdued into the dumb non-resistance 
of sheep. One wonders that so feeble a folk ever had 
the spirit to leave their homes, embittered as their ex- 
istence there was, to go across the sea to the New 
World. 

This portrayal of the social conditions of Germany 
has brought us rather in advance chronologically of our 
subject, for the first emigration of Germans to America 
in 1683 was influenced by purely religious motives and 
not at all by any social conditions. Many causes, as is 
usual in any large movement, combined to influence this : 
mysticism with a Rosicrucian coloring. Pietism and the 
unfavorable aspect towards it of German church life, the 
Mennonite movement, and last, but not least, the per- 
sonal influence and presence of a man great enough to 
lead events, — William Penn, Founder of Pennsylvania. 



CHAPTER II 

PENN's visit to GERMANY 

Penn made, it is probable, three visits to Germany 
and Holland. The first, to Labadie, had probably no 
influence on subsequent emigration ; the second, in 1674, 
to Embden and Crefeld, led only to the writing of sev- 
eral religious pamphlets; but the last, in 1677, more 
extensive in its scope, set in motion the tiny rivulet of 
sectarian emigration, which grew presently to a mighty 
river. 

The journal of this religious visit was subsequently 
published, but we take from it only notices of those por- 
tions of the journey which influenced subsequent emi- 
gration. The Mennonites in Holland and Germany 
offered prepared ground for Quaker missionaiy endeav- 
ors ; the two sects held many principles in common, as 
the wrongfulness of war, of judicial oaths, of a paid min- 
istry, of ornament in dress, and of infant baptism. Pearly 
Quaker missionaries had set up meetings at Krisheim 
and Crefeld. The Pietists also sympathized with many 
of the Quaker views, in particular that of the Inner 
Light ; but Spener, the leader of these believers in Frank- 
fort, avoided a meeting with Penn. The Philadelphian 
societies, of English origin, were tolerably numerous 
both in Holland and Germany ; the Labadists and the 
mystics generally also formed strategic points, of which 
Penn, like the able man he was, took advantage. 

At Frankfort he became much interested in the young 

22 



Penn's Visit to Germany 

and nobly born mystic, Fraiilein von Merlau, who, 
after her marriage to the learned Chiliast professor, 
Petersen, wrote apocalyptic books " hard to be under- 
stood." Penn made from Frankfort a short visit to 
Worms and Krisheim ; at the latter place he edified the 
plain folk of the village in a barn ; the magistrate of the 
little town hid behind a door to spy upon the conventi- 
cle, but afterwards reported that " he heard nothing but 
what was good, and as to heresy he had not discovered 
any." 

After Penn returned to England and obtained the 
grant of his province, four years later, he thought of the 
distressed " Friends" of Germany, and wrote to Benja- 
min Furly to recommend him Pennsylvania as an asylum 
for all oppressed sects. A number of pamphlets were 
prepared, setting forth the advantages of the new prov- 
ince beyond the seas : such as "Some Account of the 
Pro\'ince of Pennsylvania," which was translated into 
German under the title " Eine Nachricht wegen der 
Landschaft Pennsilvania in America" and went through 
several editions, also Dutch and French translations. 
The "Frame of Government" of the new province was 
also published, as was a little tract giving " Information 
and direction to such persons as are inclined to America," 
which was translated into German and Dutch. "A 
Brief Account of the Province of Pennsylvania" was 
immediately translated by Furly into Dutch, French, 
and German. There soon began a flood of books, 
broadsides, and pamphlets, some setting forth the ad- 
vantages of the Quaker province, others attacking or 
defending the Quakers or their doctrine. But enough 
had been disseminated to show what a haven of refug-e 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

had been opened for the troubled sectaries of the Rhine- 
land, and into it flocked all manner of persecuted, 
plundered, and down-trodden people. 

Furly established two companies, one (not formally 
associated) at Crefeld, the other, the Frankfort Company, 
at that city on the Main. Of this Eleanora von Merlau 
and her husband, Dr. Petersen, were among the original 
stockholders, as also the merchant, Van de Walle, at 
whose house Peqn held his first meeting in Frankfort. 
None of the Frankfort Company ever came to America ; 
but the weavers of Crefeld and the simple Mennonites 
of Krisheim did emigrate and were the pioneers of the 
immense emigration of later time. 

Dr. Seidensticker, the first and fullest investigator of 
the German roots of the emigration, says, "To complete 
the proof that the project of buying land and founding 
a settlement in Pennsylvania originated in the very cir- 
cles that had been in contact with Penn, we have the 
statement of Pastorius, contained in an autobiographical 
memoir, to this effect ; ' Upon my return to Frankfort 
in 1682, I was glad to enjoy the company of my former 
acquaintances and Christian friends assembled together 
in a house called the Saalhof, viz. : Dr. Spener . . . 
Jacobus von de Walle . . . Eleanora von Merlau . . . 
etc., who sometimes made mention of William Penn, of 
Pennsylvania, and showed me letters from Benjamin 
Furley, also printed relations concerning said province 
[probably the "Account"] ; finally the whole secret could 
not be withheld from me that they had purchased 
twenty-five thousand acres of land in this remote part of 
the world. Some of them entirely resolved to transport 
themselves, families and all. This begat such a desire 

24 



Penn's Visit to Germany 

in my soul to continue in their society and with them to 
lead a quiet, godly, and honest life in a howling wilder- 
ness, that by several letters I requested my father's con- 
sent, besides two hundred and fifty reichsthalers ; where- 
upon I went to Krisheim and immediately prepared for 
the journey.' " So at last we are face to face with a body 
of sectaries who really intend to emigrate, and with the 
man who is to be their leader. The era of journeying, 
of preparation, of pamphleteering, is passed, and that 
of action, of emigration, of pioneering, has begun. 

The German emigration to America has been com- 
pared to a mighty river ; the simile is a good one. And 
as a river is made up of the waters of many streams and 
these in turn flow from numberless tiny springs rising in 
obscure places, so many things and people little accounted 
of by the great world went to feed the tide. The cen- 
tury-long suffering of Mennonite in Switzerland and 
Protestant in the Palatinate ; Penn's apostolic journey- 
ings along the Rhine from one little group of " Friends" 
or Mystics or Pietists to another ; Furly's industrious 
pamphlet-writing ; the mystical dreamings of " the fair 
von Merlau" and her Pietist friends of the Saalhof con- 
cerning the possibility of better serving God in the vir- 
gin wilderness of Pennsylvania, which fired the noble, 
simple, courageous heart of Pastorius ; all went to 
prepare the way — may we not reverently say ? — for Him 
who led His humble people by a way they knew not, 
through the sea to a promised land of peace and free- 
dom and brotherly love. 



25 



CHAPTER III 

GERMANTOWN 

As we enter upon the histor>^ of the settlement of 
Germans in the New World, we feel that nothing in that 
history, no homeh^ trait nor trifling detail, can be unin- 
teresting. It has the freshness and importance that 
inhere in all beginnings. Yet the story is largely but 
"the short and simple annals of the poor." 

The colonists were Mennonites, weavers from Crefeld 
on the Rhine. They belonged to that persecuted sect 
of "defenceless Christians," as they often entitled them- 
selves, who trace their spiritual descent back to the pure 
doctrines of the early Waldenses. But it is likely that 
they represent onh* one of the streams of tendency of 
Reformation or indeed pre-Reformation times ; one 
which arose among the common people and represented 
obscurely, and sometimes faultily, their blind and pas- 
sionate desire for a pure, simple church in which all be- 
lievers should be equal, in which no importance should 
be attached to forms and ceremonies, in which tliere 
should be no strife between brethren, neither wars nor 
judicial oaths ; and an equal desire for such a reform in 
the state as should make their burdens and oppressions a 
little lighter and by which the state should not persecute 
any man for doing or believing what he thought to be 
right. These Swiss and German peasants of the time 
of Columbus were inarticulately desiring what the great 
Italian statesman of our own day phrased in his im- 

26 



Germantown 

mortal watchword of " a free church in a free state." 
But the idea was too great and free for the time. The 
unlearned men who taught it and tried to practise it, 
though they sometimes enjoyed the leadership of men 
like Felix Mantz, learned and wise and good, yet fell for 
the most part under the guidance of leaders so mad- 
dened by their wrongs that they could but strike blindly 
at the whole existing order of things or who reacted from 
churchly formalism into a fanatical freedom which broke 
all laws, human and divine. The excesses of the Peas- 
ants' War turned Luther's mighty influence against 
them. John of Leyden and the other mad "prophets" 
of Miinster gave the Anabaptists a name and a fame 
which centuries of pious and peaceful life could not 
clear. 

But in this lowest point of the life of the sect — if a 
body so formless and heterogeneous could be called a 
sect — there arose their Luther, their Calvin : Menno 
Simon, from whom they take their present name. He 
was a Frieslander, formerly a Catholic priest, converted 
by witnessing the martj^dom of an Anabaptist ; and his 
first writing was a protest against the party of violence 
in the Anabaptist body. He succeeded in discrediting 
this party, and henceforth the Mennonites were men of 
peace. 

But church and state, alike exasperated against them, 
gave them no rest. Their martyr-roll is a long and 
piteous one. For three centuries they found no tolera- 
tion save in Holland, where William of Orange pro- 
tected them. In Germany and Switzerland their prop- 
evtyr was confiscated, they were exiled, imprisoned, 
burnt, broken on the wheel, drowned, according to the 

27 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

disposition of the reigning princes or existing govern- 
ments. So it is not strange that the httle band of Men- 
nonite weavers had the courage to leave their Crefeld 
homes and try the new place of refuge, even beyond 
seas, which was opened to them by their friend, Penn. 
They had little to lose and might gain much. 

Certainly in looking into the history of the tiny com- 
pany who first dared the dangers of the ocean and the 
wilderness for freedom of worship, we must recognize, 
as they would most gratefully have done, the good hand 
of their God upon them ; and not the least of their 
blessings was the character of their leader, Pastorius. 
He was an educated man, as to religious opinion a 
Pietist ; he had travelled and studied widely for those 
days. His family were people of position in the Father- 
land ; he had many wealthy and learned friends there, 
and his noble character, his learning and culture, made 
many more in "the forest court of William Penn." He 
was a bit of a pedant, it is true. The construction of 
his Rusca Apium, which 

' ' with bees began 
And through the gamut of creation ran — " 

a compendium in all the many languages he knew, of 
all human knowledge, was the occupation of years, but 
it was the harmless diversion of a scholar almost alone 
in the wilderness, and we do not know that he neglected 
his colony or his school for the entrancing amusement 
of writing it. He went delightedly to an exile in the 
strange New World from all that makes life precious to 
the cultivated and refined, and for the rest of his 
earthly pilgrimage he led and cared for and instructed 
wisely and patiently the simple weavers of Crefeld who 

28 



Germantown 

formed his colony, condescending to men of low estate, 
although enjoying to the full the society of cultivated 
people such as the President of the Provincial Council, 
Thomas Lloyd, or Lloyd's greater master, William Penn. 

Pastorius's arrival preceded that of his colonists by six 
weeks. His first impressions of the City of Brotherly 
Love were not very favorable ; a few huts, " the rest 
woods and thickets in which I several times lost myself," 
so he describes it. His earliest residencie there was a 
cave or rather such a "dug-out" as is still the primitive 
shelter on our Western frontier. 

It was the 6th of October, 1683, when the first Ger- 
man colonists landed in Pennsylvania from the ship 
"Concord" — auspicious name ! They had had a pros- 
perous voyage. "The blessing of the Lord did attend 
us," writes an English fellow-traveller, "so that we had a 
very comfortable passage and had our health all the 
way." There were thirteen families of emigrants, but 
the number of people is uncertain ; " 33 freights," they 
are counted, but as a child was called a half-freight, we 
cannot know of just how many men, women, and chil- 
dren the party consisted. They proceeded immediately 
to settle themselves. On the 12th of October a warrant 
was issued to Pastorius for six thousand acres of land 
" on behalf of the German and Dutch purchasers ;" on 
the 24th it was surveyed and divided into lots, and the 
next day the Germans met in the " cave" of Pastorius 
to draw lots for the choice of location. 

And it was then, at the beginning of the records of 
this pioneer settlement of Germans in America, that 
Pastorius, seeing as in a vision the long train of Teutonic 
emigrants which should follow the little " Concord" and 

29 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

her "33 freights" across the seas, greeted them in the 
stately Latin which Whittier has translated into English 
rhythm of touching beauty : 



" Hail to posterity ! 
Hail, future men of Germanopolis ! 

Let the young generations yet to be 
Look kindly upon this. 
Think how your fathers left their native land, — 

Dear German-land ! O sacred hearths and homes !- 
And, where the wild beast roams, 
In patience planned 
New forest-homes beyond the mighty sea, 

There undisturbed and free 
To live as brothers of one family. 
What pains and cares befell, 
What trials and what fears, 
Remember, and wherein we have done well 
Follow our footsteps, men of coming years ! 
Where we have failed to do 
Aright, or wisely live. 
Be warned by us, the better way pursue. 
And, knowing we were human, even as you. 
Pity us and forgive ! 
Farewell, Posterity ! 
Farewell, dear Germany ! 
Forevermore, farewell !" 



The colonists of Germantown built small huts, dug 
cellars, and passed the winter in much discomfort. " It 
could not be described," wrote Pastorius, "nor would it 
be believed by coming generations in what want and 
need and with what Christian contentment and persistent 
industry this German township started." But by the next 
year one of the settlers could write his brother, "I have 
been busy and made a brave dwelling-house and under 
it a cellar fit to live in and have so much grain such as 



Germantown 

Indian Corn and Buckwheat that this winter I shall be 
better off than what I was last year." 

Each summer brought them new accessions of pros- 
perity and of fellow-countrymen to swell their numbers. 
Among the men of the "Concord" or those who after- 
wards cast in their lots with them, were Jacob Telner, a 
merchant, one of the original purchasers of land while 
yet in Crefeld, the leader, next to Pastorius, of the little 
community ; Willem Rittinghuys, who built the first 
paper-mill in the colonies, but is more widely known as 
the progenitor of David Rittenhouse, self-taught genius, 
surveyor, orrery-maker, philosopher, astronomer, and 
patriot ; Reynier Jansen, an early Pennsylvanian printer 
and a very bad one ; and the two Op Den Graeffs, men 
of mark in the little community of their day, but known 
now because their names with those of Gerrit Hendricks 
and " Francis Daniell Pastorius" are signed to that sim- 
ple petition against slavery which the Germantown 
Friends sent to "the monthly meeting held at Richard 
Worrell's" in i688. 

Let us hear a few of its simple words : "Is there an> 
that would be done or handled at this manner? viz. to 
be sold or made a slave for all the time of his life ? 
How fearfull and fainthearted are many at sea when 
they see a strange vessel being afraid it should be a 
Turck and they should be tacken and sold for Slaves in 
Turckey. Now what is this better done than Turcks 
doe ? yea, rather is it worse for them which say they are 
Christians. . . . Now tho' they be black, we cannot 
conceive there is more liberty to have them slaves as it 
is to have other white men. . . . To bring men hither 
or to robb or sell them against their will, we stand 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

against . . . Pray, what thiiii; in the world can be 
done worse toward us than if men should robb or steal 
us away and sell us for slaves to strange countries, sepa- 
rating husband from their wife and children. Being now 
this is not done at that manner we will be done at, there- 
for we contradict and are against this traffic of men- 
body." It was promptly decided "not to be proper 
for this meeting to give a positive judgement in the 
case."' and stifled into silence. Yet, as Pennypacker 
sa}-s, "A little rill there started which further on be- 
came an immense torrent, and whenever hereafter men 
trace the causes which led to Shiloh, Gettysburg, and 
Appomattox, they will begin with the tender consciences 
of the linen-weavers and husbandmen o{ German- 
to\\m." 

There are few incidents to record in the life of the 
colony. In 1691 the town was incorporated, but no one 
wished to hold office and the government perished 
through lack of political ambition in its intended 
burghers. A few years after there tarried briefl)- at 
Germantown the strange community of " The Woman 
in the Wilderness." 

In the same }-ear there was anotlier arrival which 
awakened pit}- rather than curiosity, and yet it was the 
end of a strange stor\' which came before their eyes. 
Twenty years previous to the landing of Penn, the 
Mennonites of Amsterdam had endeavored to plant a 
colon}- in the New Netherlands under the leadership of 
one Comelis Plockho}- : but the English fell upon the 
settlement of "■' defenceless Christians" and destroyed it, 
as their governor proudh* boasted, *' even to a naile." 
The waters of oblivion closed over the luckless colony. 



Germantown 

Thirty years after there came to Germantown a blind 
old man led by his aged wife. The pity of the benevo- 
lent Mennonites was excited for him, the more that he 
was a brother in the faith. They built him a little house 
and gave him a tiny garden for so long as he and his 
wife should live ; they planted a tree in front of it, under 
which he might sit to feel and hear the peaceful happi- 
ness about him. Rittinghuys and another were appointed 
to take up for the poor old people " a free-will offering." 
This blind old wanderer was the leader of that hapless 
colony, Cornelis Plockhoy. 

The little community grew and prospered ; they had 
a paper-mill ; they made " very fine German Linen such 
no Person of Quality need be ashamed to wear ;" they 
built a prison and a church, and a school-house in which 
Pastorius "kept school." In 1702 they colonized, when 
Matthias Van Bebber chose to take up his land "on the 
Skippack" and established there what was often called 
Van Bebberstown, to the great confusion of later his- 
torians. Another fertile source of perplexity and mis- 
take was the Dutch custom of adding the father's name 
instead of the surname, so that Dirck Op Den Graeff 
appears as Dirck Isaacs, and Matthias Jacobs is really 
Matthias Van Bebber. 

At the opening of the new century the Germantown 
colonists passed through a period of great alarm, lest 
their little properties, which they had won from the wil- 
derness twenty years before, should be taken from them. 
The Frankfort Company, perhaps dissatisfied with Pasto- 
rius's stewardship or yielding to his request to be relieved 
from the burden of the business, appointed new agents, — 
Daniel Falkner, Kelpius the hermit, and a certain Jawert. 
3 33 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

Falkner seems to have been the only one who acted. He 
sold a large tract of the Montgomery County land to an 
unprincipled speculator, Sprogel, who attempted also to 
eject many of the Germantown colonists. They hurried 
in their extremity to Pastorius, who was able, by following 
the advice given him by his friend James Logan, to save 
the Germantown people's land ; but the twenty thousand 
acres in Montgomery County, much the larger portion 
of their original possessions, were lost to the Frankfort 
Company, though German colonists settled upon it and 
peopled " Falkner's Swamp," New Hanover, and Potts- 
town with the Teutonic stock. 

Pastorius's life was now drawing to a close. It had 
been a busy one ; as school-teacher, land-agent, member 
of the Provincial Assembly, justice of the peace, notary, 
and, in short, guide, philosopher, and friend to the whole 
little community, his hands and heart and head must 
have been filled. His later years were embittered by 
the quarrels and accusations of those who supplanted 
him in the agency for the Frankfort Company, He 
complains : 

" Nun in meinen alten Jahren 
Muss ich noch viel Leids erfahren, 
Und in meinen schwachsten Tagen 
Die allerschwersten Lasten tragen." 



And later: 



" Main Gott und Heiland, welcher hat, 
Mich an bisher erhalten, 
Wird hoffentlich mit seiner Gnad 
Auch ob der Meinen walten. ' ' 

It was for these, his two sons, and only children, 
that he wrote the great MS. folio, the compend of 

34 



Germantown 

knowledge and good advice, which is still possessed by 
his descendants. 

The very day of his death is unknown, though it 
took place probably in the last weeks of the year 17 19. 
Of this Moses of the German exodus must be said, as 
of him of old, " no man knoweth of his sepulchre unto 
this day." But though he lies in an unmarked and 
unknown grave, he is not without a monument in the 
esteem and affectionate reverence with which all who 
have studied the history of the early German emigration 
to America have contemplated this figure which William 
Penn, his friend, fitly characterized as "sober, upright, 
wise and pious — a man everywhere esteemed and of 
unspotted name !" 



35 



CHAPTER IV 

THE LABADISTS IN MARYLAND 

Another body of emigrants who came over about 
the same time as the Germantown colonists merit at least 
mention, for although emigrating from Friesland, their 
leader Sluyter was a German from Wesel, and there were 
among the sect, if not among the colonists, many Ger- 
mans. They came, like the Crefelders, from the border 
land between the " High and Low Dutch," as the two 
peoples were called by our forefathers ; they represented 
the sectarian tendencies of the time in Europe, and they 
came here seeking, like the Mennonites of Pastorius' col- 
ony, " freedom to worship God ;" but they were different 
people from the simple and sensible weavers of Crefeld, 
and they had leaders very different from Menno and 
Pastorius. 

The sect of Labadists, as they were commonly called, 
took its name and rise from the fervent preaching of 
Jean de la Badie, a Frenchman of noble birth, son of 
the Governor of Guyenne ; a pupil of the Jesuits, who, 
seeing his superior talents, persuaded him to enter their 
order, much against the wishes of his family. He be- 
came what in our day would have been called a popular 
revivalist, a preacher of rare eloquence and marvellous 
power over his hearers. The study of the "Institutes" 
o{ his fellow-countryman Calvin taught him that he had 
more in common with the Reformed than the Roman 
Church, and he left the Catholic communion. In the 

36 



The Labadists in Maryland 

Reformed Church he evidenced his singular power over 
men's minds by gathering about him a company of be- 
lievers, noblemen and gentlewomen, many learned and 
of wide reputation and spotless character. Of these 
were Yvon, his successor, the nobleman Du Lignon, 
and the most learned woman of her time, Anna von 
Schurmann, as well as the three ladies van Sommelsdyk, 
sisters of the Governor of Surinam, in whose ancestral 
castle of Wiewaert in Friesland the wandering sect found 
its last and longest home. 

The doctrines which he taught resembled those of 
many mystics of the times — such as the insistence that 
the church should consist exclusively of those who could 
convince Labadie of their personal regeneration ; the 
baptism of adult believers only ; the indwelling of the 
Holy Spirit in all believers, so that the gifts of prophecy 
were still continued to the church (an article held vehe- 
mently by the so-called " Inspiriten"' of Germany); to- 
gether with some beliefs peculiar to Labadie, such as the 
duty of holding all possessions in common and the holi- 
ness of marriage between believers, their children being 
born sinless, but the invalidity of a marriage between a 
" believer" — in this case a Labadist — and one outside 
the church. The founder frequently separated husband 
and wife when not convinced of the regeneration of 
either party, and it may readily be seen that interference 
in domestic concerns of such delicacy would result in 
hatred, malice, and all uncharitableness on the part 
of the outside world, together with many accusations 
which seem to have been ignorant or wicked slanders. 
But with all its extravagance and Labadie' s lack of 
"common discretion," the influence of his preaching of 

37 



The Germans In Colonial Times 

personal righteousness still blesses the Reformed church 
on both sides of the sea, as does that of the Pietist 
Spener, the Lutheran. 

William Penn says that the Labadists were " a plain, 
serious people and came near to Friends as to silence 
in meeting, women speaking, preaching by the Spirit, 
and plainness in garb and furniture." Whether Penn's 
visits had that influence in directing the Labadists 
towards the New World which we know they had 
upon the emigrants to Germantown does not appear. 
Probably they rather sought an asylum in some Dutch 
colony, being mainly of that race ; for their first attempt 
was in the direction of Surinam, where, as I have said, 
the brother of their patroness was the governor ; but 
this tropical country proved most ill adapted to their 
purpose ; the deadly climate and the rampant vegetation 
conquered the pious laborers, and the assassination of 
Governor van Sommelsdyk, with the seizure and plun- 
dering by pirates of the second shipload of colonists, 
forced them to abandon the enterprise. 

Accordingly, they sent two of their number, Sluyter 
and Bankers, to spy out the land in the New World. 
The journal of these forerunners was preserved by some 
strange chance out of the general wreck of the Laba- 
dist community in Holland, and finally coming into the 
hands of an American antiquary was published, and 
affords us a detailed picture of the colonies as they ap- 
peared to rather prejudiced and splenetic travellers of the 
time. Sluyter and Bankers came over under assumed 
names, and seemed to have been in considerable fear lest 
their connection with the " Bush people" (as the Laba- 
dists were called in Wiewaert) should be discovered. 

38 



The Labadists in Maryland 

They explored the shores of the Delaware and the 
Chesapeake, and finally selected a tract called Bohemia 
Manor, on Chesapeake Bay, at the junction of the Bo- 
hemia and Elk Rivers. 

A patent for this land, expressed with the convenient 
indefiniteness of those early grants, had been issued to 
Augustine Heerman, a Bohemian by birth, a surveyor by 
profession, and a man of position and distinction in the 
colony of New York. His eldest son, Ephraim, had 
been converted by the Labadists, who met him on a 
journey from New York to New Castle to bring home 
his young bride, and he had promised them part of the 
manor which his father intended to leave to him, making 
him lord of the manor, for the aged surveyor in his old 
age and feebleness was pathetically anxious to found a 
family and to perpetuate his name in the new country. 
Ephraim Heerman, however, promised that the tract 
should never be given to any but his new religious 
friends with his consent, and so provided the two investi- 
gators returned to Holland and brought over a little 
colony of about one hundred persons, landing in New 
York July 27, 1683. 

They found on their arrival that old Augustine Heer- 
man by no means assented to the project of his eldest 
son and heir to dower these strange religionists with part 
of the manor which he had hoped to make hereditary 
in his family. It was only after legal proceedings that 
Heerman was forced to execute the deed which gave the 
Labadists nearly four thousand acres of land, afterwards 
known as the " Labadie Tract" 

Sluyter took the position of head of the community, 
which was regarded as a daughter church of the sect at 

39 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

Wiewaert. AH credentials of persons desiring to join 
the community must be passed upon in Holland. 
Sluyter's wife assumed the place of abbess, having 
oversight of the women in the settlement. Their rule 
was reported to be strict, if not tyrannical and arbitrary ; 
they separated husband and wife, mother and child, as- 
signed the refined and educated of the community to 
any, even the most menial, tasks, and exacted much sim- 
plicity of living from the members of the sect, but 
were said to have accumulated considerable property 
themselves, and to be notoriously cruel to the slaves 
whom they held. 

Sluyter was once ordered back to Holland by the 
head of the church there, but replied that it was evident 
to him that it was not the will of God that he should 
obey the summons, and remained in Bohemia Manor. 
They made some converts from among the colonists, but 
their most notable one, Ephraim Heerman, had a short 
and tragic history. His old father, incensed at his con- 
duct and his desertion of his young and lovely wife to 
unite himself with the Labadists, pronounced upon him 
the curse that he should not survive two years after join- 
ing his new-found friends. Ephraim left the community 
after a brief residence with them, and returned to his wife, 
but in less than the prescribed two years fell ill and died 
a raving maniac. 

Two descriptions of the little sect have been preserved, 
one by Dittlebach, a temporary adherent, who soon left 
them and naturally paints everything as to the hardships 
of the life and the tyranny of Sluyter in the darkest colors ; 
another by a Quaker preacher, Samuel Bownas, who 
visited the community about twenty years after their 

40 



The Labadists in Maryland 

foandation and saw but the outside of the hfe which he 
portrays as a quiet, industrious, and reHgious one. 

The Labadists as a sect were not of long continuance, 
either in their Friesland home or in the Maryland one. 
After the death of the last of the van Sommelsdyk ladies, 
there were no more Labadists left to shelter in the old 
castle of Wiewaert. In America Sluyter died in 1722, 
leaving his property to his nephews and his son-in-law, 
for the sect abandoned the principle of community of 
goods about fifteen years after coming to Maryland. 

What finally became of the "daughter church" of 
Bohemia Manor we cannot tell. We know that when 
Sluyter died there were several of " his brethren and 
sisters in Christ Jesus" still expecting, in the so-called 
"Great House" of the community, that final consum- 
mation of all things which Jean de la Badie had 
announced as imminent seventy years before. In an 
old map published at the end of the eighteenth century 
there is marked a tree notable by its size or position as 
the " Labadie poplar." This seems all that then re- 
mained to mark the fact that at Bohemia Manor there 
had once labored and prayed and waited the followers 
of the eloquent "prophet of Bordeaux," Jean de la 
Badie, 



41 



CHAPTER V 

THE WOMAN IN THE WILDERNESS 

About ten years after the Labadists had settled on 
their tract at Bohemia Manor, another band of strange 
mystics arrived at Bohemia Landing, and, kneehng to 
thank God for having carried them " as on eagle's wings 
such an immense distance through all the gates of death," 
they set out on their way towards Philadelphia, the Mecca 
of many such pious pilgrims in those days. There were 
forty of them, — men, women, and children, — the number 
of perfection in the Rosicrucian philosophy ; and a 
mixture of this strange mystification from the Kabala, 
with Jakob Boehme's visions of the Morning Redness, 
the Philadelphian doctrines of Jane Leade, and the first 
ascetic enthusiasm of the most mystical of the earlier 
Pietists, made up the composite creed which they had 
come into the American wilderness to propagate and to 
practise. 

The little community, which came later to be nick- 
named "Das Weib in der Wiiste," or "The Woman in 
the Wilderness," from an allusion to Rev. XII : 14, was the 
result of the strange Chiliasm and the prophecies of a 
Lutheran pastor of Wiirtemberg, Zimmermann, who had 
reached the conclusion, from the study of Boehme's 
writings, that the Lutheran church was the Babylon de- 
nounced in the Apocalypse, and having published these 
views extensively under various pseudonyms, was, not 
unnaturally, deposed from the Lutheran ministry and 

42 



The Woman in the Wilderness 

expelled from the country by the government, the head 
of church as well as state. Zimmermann retaliated by 
informing his ruler that the cruel invasion of Wiirtem- 
berg by the French was a punishment sent by heaven 
upon the wicked country which had cast him out. After 
a sojourn in Hamburg among the " host of mystics, mil- 
lenarians, and dreamers with which the tolerant city was 
blessed," he led the little congregation which he had 
gathered towards Pennsylvania, doubtless influenced, like 
Pastorius, by a desire to live a purer life in the wilderness 
far from European vanities. But the Moses of this new 
exodus, like him of old, died in sight of his promised 
land. On the eve of their sailing from Rotterdam, 
Zimmermann passed away ; his widow and children, 
helped by "good hearts," went on with the little band 
to Pennsylvania. 

The headship of the community passed to Magister 
Johann Kelpius, a man alike of learning, lovely charac- 
ter, and the strangest mystical views. He was the son 
of a pastor in Siebenbiirgen, and had been a student, 
and an especial favorite, of the learned Dr. Fabricius at 
the University of Altorf Where and through whom he 
became attached to the peculiar mystical and separa- 
tistic doctrines which he afterwards professed and prac- 
tised in the wilds of Pennsylvania, we cannot tell. 
Boehme attracted him as he did others of the Pietists 
and mystics. Dr. Petersen, who, with his wife, was a 
member of the Frankfort Company, seems to have 
indoctrinated Kelpius with his own belief that the end 
of all things, and their restoration to the perfection of 
Paradise, was at hand ; and the delusion of Rosicru- 
cianism, fostered, as it seems, by the pious fraud of a 

43 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

Lutheran clergyman of pietistic Wiirtemberg, possessed 
Kelpius and his communit}' of forty in the fullest 
measure. 

We may find in Kelpius's diary of their voyage what 
it was in those days to lea\e "dear Germany," as Pas- 
torius touchingly calls it, to find rest for one's conscience 
in the New World. The pilgrims went to London, stayed 
there six months, received both spiritual and financial 
help from the Philadclphian Societ}^ and other devout 
people of their way of thinking, and then took passage 
in the ship "Sarah Maria," whose prosaic name they 
wondrously allegorized. After narrowly escaping ship- 
wreck on the Goodwin Sands, they arrived at Deal, 
where ensued another tedious waiting, this time for a 
convoy, since the war between the European powers 
and Louis XIV. made the seas unsafe. No convo}- 
came, so they went to Plymouth, hoping there to find 
protection for their voyage. None being obtainable, 
they made an arrangement to be escorted " 200 Holland 
Miles" on their route by some war-ships which were on 
their way to Spain. When they and their little consort 
had been left to their own devices, three French vessels 
attacked them. The Brotherhood of the Rosy Cross 
would not take up carnal weapons, but fortunately there 
were other passengers not so conscientious, and the ships 
were beaten off — one even taken as a prize. 

So they went on their wa\-, not further molested, to 
the "Capes of Delaware," which they sighted on the 
day of a solar eclipse, and finally, on the 24th of June, 
1694, they safely arrived at Philadelphia. This was St 
John's Day, a date peculiarly sacred to the Rosicrucians, 
and there is a strange tradition that after nightfall the 

44 



The Woman in the Wilderness 

forty faithful went to " Fair Mount"' and heaped together 
wood and pine boughs to make the Baal-firc, which yet 
blazes on Irish headlands and in German villages. The 
brands of " St. John's fire" scattered, and their cere- 
monies over, the pilgrims returned to the little city, and 
the next morning took their way to Germantown, the 
head-quarters of all newly arrived Germans, 

But they remained here only a few months. It was 
never their intention to settle among other men, how- 
ever kindly they were welcomed, but to live a hermit 
life somewhere in the wilderness, supporting themselves 
by their labor while they watched the signs of the times, 
and " expected that blessed hope, the bright appearing 
of the Lord." A friend in Philadelphia — probably 
Thomas Fairman, surveyor of the province — gave them 
a tract of woodland on " the Ridge," near the lovely 
Wissahickon. In this Waldcinsamkeit they built them- 
selves a log-house forty feet square, its sides true to the 
cardinal points, and containing one large room for meet- 
ing, having an iron cross fixed against its wall. Besides 
this room were cells for the brethren, and a school-room 
for the children whom they gathered and instructed. 
Upon the top of the building was an observatory, 
whence some of the brethren kept watch all night 
for the signs in heaven and the coming of the Bride- 
groom. Surmounting the log-house was the Rosicrucian 
symbol, the cross within the wheel of eternity ; this was 
so placed that the rising sun should flood it with rosy light, 
the " morning redness" which the shoemaker of Gorlitz 
had seen in his vision, the herald of the end of this world. 
Kelpius himself built a little cave near by, and there in a 
tiny room he lived out his short life, expectant of the 

45 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

final consummation of all things, A dark, cool spring, 
still called the Hermit's Spring, and the beautiful dell 
in which religious meetings were held in the open air, 
remain to testify of the Hermits of the Wissahickon. 

The hermit life was not passed in useless contempla- 
tion. The people of the neighboring Germantown 
loved and revered these gentle enthusiasts, sympathized 
with their millenarian ideas to some extent, gladly sent 
their children to be instructed free of charge by these 
learned men, or thronged the services conducted after 
the Lutheran forms by the Falkner brothers or Koster 
in the hermitage or the near-by city. The mystics also 
possessed some medical skill ; particularly were they be- 
lieved to have a magical knowledge of the properties of 
herbs, to be able to use the divining-rod for the discov- 
ery of springs and precious metals, to cast horoscopes, 
and to prepare amulets, which, hung about the neck, 
were of marvellous efficacy in sickness. 

More useful and less recondite crafts were followed 
by the Brethren of the Rosy Cross. When Jansen 
brought his press into the province and perpetrated 
those misprinted incunabula which were among the first 
fruits of the Pennsylvania press, the hermits gave him 
much-needed help as compositors and correctors ; and 
Johann Selig, one of their leaders, practised for Jansen 
and for others his craft as a bookbinder. They held 
public religious services daily, to which all were wel- 
comed, and tried to bring about a union of sects in the 
province where, contrary to Whittier's line, " the many- 
crecded men" dwelt often the reverse of peacefully. 
They investigated the Indian beliefs and religious or 
mystical practices. Kelpius kept up an extensive theo- 

46 



The Woman in the Wilderness 

logical correspondence with friends of his own way of 
thinking both in Europe and the colonies, and seems to 
have been a sort of general religious adviser. The 
Seventh-Day Baptists of New England sent an embassy 
to consult him ; a good woman in Virginia wrote to 
know his opinion of the Quaker beliefs and practices. 
Kelpius also composed hymns, which those persevering 
persons who have read them pronounce stiff, unpoetic, 
verbose paraphrases of the Song of Solomon ; besides 
religious letters, in which "the universal restitution," the 
millennium, the "Metempsosis," the "Heavenly Sophia," 
and other wonders figure to the confusion of the modern 
student, who would rather learn something of the daily 
life and actions of the pure, noble, gentle dreamer, — 
" maddest of good men," as even the congenial Hermit 
of Amesbury was forced to call him. 

The magical practices of the community must not con- 
demn them with the modern reader when we remember 
that the saintly Tersteegen had to warn his followers 
against the time-wasting search for the elixir, that medi- 
cines given by his holy hand were thought to have a 
supernatural efficacy, and that Sir Isaac Newton copied 
out long extracts from Boehme for his own use. The 
mystics of the Wissahickon were neither in advance of 
their time nor behind it. 

This quaint, ascetic, mystical life in the American 
wilderness lasted with little change until the death of 
Kelpius in 1708. The life in this case, though at first 
it strengthened his health, later proved prejudicial. A 
succession of heavy colds gave rise to consumption. 
When he was very feeble, a good tailor in Germantown, 
Christian Warmer by name, took him to his own house 

47 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

to nurse him, and there he wrote, '* at Christian Warmer's 
house, very weak, in a small bed not unlike a coffin," 
one of his last hymns : 

' ' Therefore kiss or correct, come to me or go, 
Give presents or take them ; bring joy or bring woe. 
If I can have Thee, Thy will may be so !" 

When Kelpius felt his death approaching, he at first 
prayed to be exempted from the fate of " the children 
of Adam ;" but feeling that his prayer was not to be 
answered, he directed his famulus or attendant, Daniel 
Geissler, to take a casket which he gave him and throw 
it into the Schuylkill. Daniel was unwilling to destroy 
something which was of unknown value, so he hid it on 
the bank and returned to his master, who immediately 
told him that he had hidden the casket. The famulus, 
terrified by this supernatural knowledge, went back and 
did as he was told. But when the casket touched the 
water it exploded, peals of thunder and lightning 
welcomed it, and the mysterious Arcanum disappeared 
forever from human eyes. Daniel told this, a genera- 
tion afterwards, to the patriarch Muhlenberg. So a 
noble, if deluded, dreamer passed from earth to where 
his strange visions are lost in sight. With him passed 
the flourishing period of the Hermitage upon the Ridge. 
He was buried at sunset ; his brethren stood about the 
grave in a circle, chanting the De Profundis, until the 
sun touched the rim of the horizon ; then Selig gave a 
signal, the coffin was lowered into the grave, and, at the 
same moment, a white dove was set free and winged its 
way towards heaven, an emblem of the ascent of the mas- 
ter's soul, while the remaining brethren, lifting their hands, 
cried thrice, " God grant him a blessed resurrection !" 

48 



The Woman in the Wilderness 

The society made an attempt to continue its hfe after 
the loss of Kelpius ; but it was in vain. Selig, the 
especial friend of the dead master, and the one most 
resembling him in his sweet and lovable disposition, was 
chosen head of the community ; but he soon renounced 
the office, feeling unfit for it, and took up the life of a 
hermit, dwelling alone in his little cell, supporting him- 
self by cultivating a small herb-garden and by occasion- 
ally working at his trade of bookbinding. Koster, 
another early member of the community, quarrelled 
with them, set up a rival hermitage, called the Irenia or 
House of Peace, engaged in religious controversies with 
Pastorius, and has the distinction of having produced the 
first Latin work written in Pennsylvania, — a rhapsodical 
religious production with a tremendous title, — which he 
was obliged to have printed in Europe, as no one here 
could read the proof He returned to Germany after 
a few years' sojourn here, and died there, a very old 
man. The two Falkner brothers became ordained 
clergymen of the Lutheran Church, ministering to the 
wants of the scattered Lutherans of New York, New 
Jersey, and Pennsylvania, and died useful and beloved. 
Geissler, the attendant of Kelpius, went with Dr. Witt 
to Germantown, where the latter (who was, by the way, 
of English birth, the only exception in the German 
community) practised medicine, and was believed to have 
knowledge not only of the innocent "white magic," but 
also of the black art. He was a botanical friend of 
Bartram's, and supplied the latter with rare specimens. 
In his later years, Bartram mentions a visit from him to 
his gardens, when "the poor old man" was grown so 
blind that he could not distinguish a leaf from a flower. 
4 49 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

The last of the Hermits of the Ridge was Conrad 
Matthai, a Swiss, who succeeded to the headship of the 
community after Selig's withdrawal to his hermitage. 
He, with the few brethren who were left, — each in 
his own cell, for community life had now been aban- 
doned, — formed a sort of nucleus around which gathered 
various mystical religionists ; thus, he was the counsellor 
of the Eckerlins, who were afterwards so prominent 
in the Ephrata community. Zinzendorf visited him, 
and Matthai joined with him in signing the call for a 
meeting which was to unite all the Christian sects of 
Pennsylvania in a new Philadelphian brotherhood, like 
that of which the London friends of the hermits had had 
visions more than fifty years before ; but it was destined 
to no more success than the dream of Jane Leade. 
When at last " Father Conrad" became old and helpless, 
a Moravian brother was sent to minister to him. The 
teacher of the Moravian school in Germantown took the 
children to sing hymns in their childish voices to the 
dying man, — an act which gave him great pleasure. 
When the old mystic felt that his last hour was near, he 
sent for the children, asked them to sing for him a favor- 
ite Moravian hymn describing the joy of the released 
soul when it flies away from this earthly tabernacle, then 
turned to the east whence he had hoped through his 
long life to see his Saviour come, 

" When in glory eastward burning 
Our redemption draweth near, 
And we see the sign in heaven 
Of our Judge and Saviour dear. ' ' 

He prayed fervently, then turning to the awe-struck 
children, he blessed them after the manner of the mystic 

50 



The Woman in the Wilderness 

brotherhood. Two days afterwards he died. He was 
buried by his own request near his master Kelpius's 
grave. The old disciple had asked in his humility to be 
interred at his master's feet, as he felt himself unworthy 
to lie by his side. Some of the brethren of Ephrata 
were present, as well as the last survivor of the com- 
munity, Dr. Witt, and the services were conducted after 
the Moravian order : a biographical sketch of the de- 
ceased was read, and the body was laid in the grave 
during the singing of the hymn familiar to us through 
Wesley's translation : 

"Jesus, Thy blood and righteousness 
My beauty are, my glorious dress." 

When, in 1765, Dr. Witt died, old and blind, in the 
house of his kind friends the Wiisters, the last survivor 
of the brotherhood passed from earth. Their relics are 
scattered abroad ; their Latin books, their chief wealth, 
have, some of them, been preserved in the library of 
Christ Church, Philadelphia ; the domain where they 
lived and watched for the "Aurora" — the new heavens 
and the new earth — is partly covered by a gentleman's 
country-seat, partly taken into Fairmount Park. As to 
Kelpius and Selig and the humble disciple, Matthai, no 
man knoweth of their sepulchre, only the God whom 
they so devotedly if mistakenly served, who will raise 
them up at the last day. We echo the prayer of the 
burial ritual of the brotherhood, which the white dove 
bore upward on its wings from the grave of Kelpius, — 
"God <jrant them a blessed resurrection !" 



51 



CHAPTER VI 

GERMAN VALLEY, NEW JERSEY 

Next in chronological order apparently belongs the 
settlement of German Valley, New Jersey, if we are to 
accept the statement given by Loher from the oral tra- 
dition of descendants of the first settlers. He says, " In 
1705 a number of German Reformed, residing between 
Wolfenbiittel and Halberstadt, fled to Neuwied, a town 
of Rhenish Prussia, where they remained some time, and 
then went to Holland, where they embarked, in 1707, 
for New York. Their frail ship was, by reason of ad- 
verse winds, carried into the Delaware Bay. Determined, 
however, to reach the place for which they were destined, 
and to have a home among the Dutch, they took the 
overland route from Philadelphia to New York. On 
entering the fertile charming valley of New Jersey which 
is drained by the meandering Musconetung, the Passaic 
and their tributaries, and having reached a goodly land, 
they resolved to remain in what is now known as the 
German Valley of Morris County." 

This statement is so circumstantial that we must give 
it some consideration ; yet the Rev. T. F. Chambers, the 
fullest investigator of the early German settlements of 
New Jersey, asserts that " this early date receives no 
support from any records of land transfers or from 
family history." This being so, their historian is inclined 
to think that the early Germans of New Jersey were 
of the " poor Palatines" who came to New York in the 

52 



German Valley, New Jersey 

large emigration of 1710 and the years following. Per- 
haps the truth lies between the two, and some Germans 
of the Reformed faith did really arrive so early as stated, 
while the bulk of the settlers came in the large emigra- 
tion of later years. Be this as it may, we find by 
171 3 Dominie Justus Falkner and, after his death, his 
brother Daniel ministering to the wants of the scattered 
Lutherans. 

The two Falkner brothers were, in succession, the 
chief ministrants to the Lutheran portion of these emi- 
grants, and as they were originally connected with the 
community of Kelpius, of which I have just spoken, 
it may not be uninteresting to regard them for a moment. 
Justus Falkner, the younger of the brothers, came to this 
country a student of theology, and in deacon's orders in 
the Lutheran Church, but with the intention of joining 
the mystic community on the Wissahickon. Fortunately 
both for himself and others, he was so appalled by the 
religious destitution among the Germans that he devoted 
himself and his life to the service of the church, and, 
ordained in the half-finished church of Gloria Dei in 
Wicacoa, he went to New York to be the pastor of the 
oldest church of his faith in this continent, Holy Trinity, 
of New York. The Latin prayer which he entered on 
the church register shows in what a spirit of humility he 
began his work : ' ' God, the Father of all mercy, and Lord 
of great majesty, who has thrust me into this harvest, be 
with me His lowly and ever-feeble laborer with His special 
grace, without which I should perish under the burden 
of temptations which often powerfully assail me. Make 
me fit for my calling. I have not run, but Thou hast 
sent me, yea, thrust me into my office. Free me from 

53 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

whatever taint my lost nature — always without my con- 
sent — may mingle with my service, and pardon me, I 
humbly beseech through our, yea, my Lord Jesus Christ. 
Amen." 

He was in labors abundant for more than a score of 
years, ministering to the German Lutherans from Albany 
to New York in the winter, and in the summer months 
itinerating through New Jersey. Amidst these strenu- 
ous efforts he found time to compose several hymns, 
which are still in use, both in German and in English 
translation ; among them, the best known is the spirited 
and courageous lyric, " Auf, ihr Christen, Christi Glieder," 
translated as " Rise, ye children of salvation." It 
breathes the humble yet trustful courage of the pioneer 
evangelist, whose sweet, strong, arduous life closed, it 
seems prematurely, in his fifty-first year. His fittest 
epitaph would be the conclusion of his own hymn of 
the Church Militant : 



Da Gott seinen treuen Knechten 
Geben wird den Gnaden-lohn, 
In die Hiitten der Gerechten 
Stimmen an den Sieges-Ton ; 
Da fiirwahr Gottes Schaar 
Ihn wird loben iramerdar." 



The elder brother, Daniel, though he so far followed 
in the footsteps of his younger brother that he left the 
Wissahickon community, married, was ordained, and 
ministered to his brother's congregation, was of a very 
different spirit. He was appointed by Benjamin Furly 
the successor of Pastorius as agent of the Frankfort 
Company, and so became involved in a lengthy and 

54 



German Valley, New Jersey 

acrimonious controversy with the latter. Apparently 
Pastorius had allowed the company's affairs to fall into 
a state unsatisfactory to the members of the society in 
Europe (none of whom, as will be remembered, ever 
carried out their expressed intention of emigrating to 
Pennsylvania), and the Falkner brothers and a man 
named Sprogel were appointed agents. Sprogel, who 
seems to have been an unscrupulous speculator, finally 
succeeded in getting into his hands, and away frorii both 
the Falkners and the Frankforters, the entire property 
of the company, 

Daniel Falkner followed his brother Justus in the 
charge of the New Jersey congregations on the latter' s 
death in 1723, and labored there for nearly a score of 
years. We have a last glimpse of the old Theosophist 
in the diary of Pastor Berkenmeyer, of New York, who 
went in 1731 to compose the differences which had 
arisen between Daniel Falkner and his congregations. 
The eccentricities of the former mystic had made the 
congregation desirous of a new pastor, and Berkenmeyer 
with two of his elders went to deal with Pastor Falkner, 
who had gone to the woods to gather medicinal herbs, 
and was with difficulty found and recalled from this 
characteristic occupation to discuss the affairs of his 
church. After the ensuing resignation of his pastorate, 
Falkner is reported as living in retirement with his 
daughter near New Germantown. This was in 1741. 
but the year of his death is not known ; this ends the 
history of " Daniel Falckner, Burger und Pilgrim in 
Pennsylvanien in Norden America." 

The German settlement of New Jersey extended from 
the Delaware to Hackensack, German Valley and New 

55 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

Germantown being perhaps the centre. " The bulk of 
the German population," says their annalist, "was per- 
haps to be found between Lambertville and Newton, 
and the Delaware and Bound Brook." There were 
about a dozen German churches and congregations here, 
over which Muhlenberg and Schlatter exercised their 
missionary supervision, composing differences, settling 
and removing ministers, — for the Jerseys had, in early 
times, their share of those " vagabond shepherds" who 
tried the souls of both the patriarchs, — and occasionally 
ministering there in person. 

The early settlers, though poor in this world's goods, 
bore a good reputation for industry, piety, and a pa- 
thetic desire for the ministrations of some one who could 
speak to them in their own tongue ; for this they made 
great sacrifices in their poverty, and showed a patience 
truly marvellous with the disappointments in the charac- 
ter of their early ministers which they were often called 
upon to endure. 

Among other German settlements of later times was 
the Moravian village of Greenland or Hope, which ex- 
isted from 1769 to 1808, and was then given up by the 
Brethren's Unity. 

These pioneers were so pre-eminently a religious peo- 
ple that their story is largely a history of their churches ; 
yet they were not neglectful of the school. In 1760 
the sum of a thousand pounds — large for the time — was 
left to New Germantown for the support of their church 
and school. The people willingly bore the trouble and 
expense of importing ministers from Germany that they 
might thereby secure men of learning and regular ordi- 
nation ; the recommendation of Muhlenberg, that the 

56 



German Valley, New Jersey 

ministers sent out should be able to speak Latin, so as 
to communicate with their English fellow-clergymen, 
shows what the Jersey pioneers demanded of their pas- 
tors. The first settlers of German Valley, in particular, 
were said to have been distinguished for their intelli- 
gence. 

And to anticipate a little, we find in Revolutionaiy 
times a sense of honor in the New Germantown vestry 
which may be recommended for imitation at the present 
day ; for, having borrowed the church funds, they refused 
to repay in the depreciated Continental currency, but 
offered a remuneration in something of real value. Pastor 
Nevelling of the Amwell Church mortgaged his whole 
property, loaned the money to Congress, and, having 
lost his certificate, never recovered any of the sum. 
The British set a price upon his head, as upon that of 
several other German patriot pastors. 



CHAPTER VII 



KOCHERTHALS COLONY 



The brief and unfortunate history of the colony led 
by their pastor Kocherthal to Newburg on the Hudson 
is of slight importance, save as they were the forerun- 
ners of a much larger emigration, — "the first low wash 
of waves where soon shall roll a human sea," — for they 
were the precursors, in point of time, of the great emi- 
gration of the years 1709 and 17 10. It is probable, 
too, that the news of their favorable reception had some- 
thing to do with that immense movement. 

The little colony, sixty-one souls strong when it 
started upon its wanderings, consisted of some poor 
Lutherans from Landau in the Palatinate. Most of them 
were vine-dressers, as might have been expected from 
their nativity, but other occupations were also repre- 
sented. They had been impoverished and driven from 
their homes by the severities of the war called of the 
"Spanish Succession," which had run but half of its 
course of desolation in their home-land, when they 
started out under the leadership of their pastor, the 
Rev. Josua von Kocherthal, and, taking refuge at Frank- 
fort, besought Davenant, the English representative 
there, to send them to England ; they did not ask to be 
sent farther. Davenant, applying to his home government, 
was directed to tell the Palatines that they must first 
secure the consent of their elector to their expatriation. 

But, not waiting for this formality', the Palatines, in 

58 



Kocherthal's Colony- 
March, 1708, came to England, by whose help does not 
appear, and excited the compassion of " good Queen 
Anne," who gave them a shilling a day for their mainte- 
nance, and took steps to send them to some of the British 
colonies. New York was finally selected, and having 
been naturalized without fee, the Lutherans were given 
free transportation to New York, tools, and a promise 
of support for the first year until they could maintain 
themselves. Pastor Kocherthal had a donation of a 
hundred pounds and a grant of five hundred acres for 
himself and the church he was to build. Thus furnished, 
the little colony, now reduced to fifty-two persons, 
sailed in the same ship with the newly appointed gov- 
ernor. Lord Lovelace, for New York, where they arrived 
on the last day of the year 1708. Land was assigned 
them upon the west side of the Hudson, and they named 
their town Neuburg, after the place in the Palatinate, 
which was the Stammsitz of the then reigning house 
of Pfalz-Neuburg. 

But they met with continual misfortunes. Their pro- 
tector, Lord Lovelace, died a few months after his and 
their arrival. He had paid the cost of their passage out 
of his own purse, — a purse not too well furnished, for on 
his recent accession to his title he is said to have inher- 
ited little or nothing but creditors' claims. His widow, 
"a penniless lass wi' a lang pedigree," was only reim- 
bursed after many years. 

And now religious dissensions broke out among them ; 
they complained to the new governor that nineteen of 
their number had turned Pietists, and their English 
ruler, unversed in German theological squabbles, had to 
send a committee of English and German Reformed 

59 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

clergy to see what manner of thing a Pietist might be. 
Reassured as to their harmlessness, he continued to them 
the same ration as to their more orthodox brethren. 
Kocherthal, discouraged by the condition of his flock, 
asked permission to go again to Europe to beg some 
help for them ; this was granted, and the support 
promised the colonists for the first year of their settle- 
ment was continued them through the second. 

Still the colony did not thrive. Kocherthal did not 
reside among the poor people of Neuburg, but on the 
other side of the Hudson. After his death, about 1718, 
they were left to the occasional ministrations of the 
apostolic Justus Falkner, and afterwards of other New 
York clergymen. They seem never to have had a set- 
tled pastor ; not until near the middle of the century 
was their long-promised church built, a simple log-house. 
The bell given them for it had meanwhile been lent to a 
Lutheran congregation in New York. Many of the 
earlier settlers, and those who from time to time rein- 
forced the colony, tarried only briefly, and then went to 
Pennsylvania, where the German pioneers were in a more 
flourishing state. At length their very church was taken 
from them by a piece of chicanery on the part of the 
English Episcopalians. The precious bell was saved from 
the wreck and for a time was hidden in a swamp. 

The loss of their church was a fatal blow ; in losing 
it they lost their bond of union, their language, their 
customs, — all that marked them as a German colony. 
Though descendants of the " Kocherthalern" remain, 
there is nothing left of the first German colony of New 
York but the changed name of the city which they 
baptized in honor of the town in the Palatinate. 

60 



CHAPTER VIII 

THE GREAT EXODUS OF THE PALATINES 

We come now to a movement almost unexampled in 
its extent, — the so-called " Massen-auswanderunpf der 
Pfalzer," the great exodus of the Palatines. With all 
allowance for the exaggeration of their numbers which 
the frightened authorities of Rotterdam and London 
may have made, it was an immense movement, by far 
the largest emigration of colonial times from any conti- 
nental country to America. So amazing was it that 
modern historians have sought out all sorts of recondite 
reasons why so many of the home-loving Germans 
should have expatriated themselves ; but, like most large 
movements, it is probable that many causes — some great, 
some trifling — contributed to the result. 

First in point of time was the desolation of the war 
of the Spanish Succession, lasting from i/oi to 1713, 
and devastating Wiirtemberg in its long-drawn-out mis- 
eries ; Stuttgart, in particular, experienced a three-days' 
plundering in this invasion. The Palatinate fortunately 
escaped this war, in large measure. But its exemption 
from war was more than made up in the misgovernment 
which prevailed in that unhappy country. 

In Wiirtemberg, which next to the Pfalz furnished 
the largest contingent to the exodus, conditions were 
painfully similar ; the reader is oppressed by the re- 
peated accounts of the unhindered French devastations, 
the injuries of the succeeding war of 1 701-13, the 

61 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

exactions of Villars, who pressed from the miserable 
people the incredible sum of nine million gulden, and 
the tyranny and extravagance of their petty potentate. 

Eberhard Ludwig, ruler of Wiirtemberg for fifty-six 
unhappy years, was a fine type of the German caricature 
of Louis XIV. "L'etat c'est moi" is echoed by Eber- 
hard Ludwig's declaration, " I am the pope in this land." 
Of his mistress, the Gravenitz, it was said, " Wiirtemberg 
was destroyed more by a woman than by war." She 
ruled everything through her favorites for twenty-five 
years ; her royal lover built a little Versailles to please 
her, and after his death she left the country laden with 
spoil. The grand duke's Ludwigsburg is said to be no 
bad imitation of Louis's Versailles, but it was built from 
the resources of a tiny war-scourged country.no larger 
than many an American county. 

In the contemporary accounts of the distressed Pala- 
tines and their coming over to England, religious persecu- 
tion is constantly alleged as a motive for their emigration. 
This touched the electoral government, anxious to stand 
well with its Protestant relatives of the English court, 
and the Protestant consistory, " by direction from the 
Elector Palatine," issued a declaration that "it is not 
known to any of the consistory that those withdrawn 
subjects have complained that they suffered any perse- 
cution on account of religion." The fact has been 
doubted also by some recent writers, chiefly because 
there were some Catholics among the emigrants, who 
could not have been persecuted by the Elector Palatine. 
But no one asserts that all the people of the exodus left for 
religious reasons ; and we know that most of the Catho- 
lics returned to Germany, where they could not have 

62 



The Great Exodus of the Palatines 

found life unbearable. The fact seems to be that there 
were plenty of the petty persecutions previously men- 
tioned, frequently — to their shame be it spoken — in- 
flicted by the Reformed Protestants upon the Lutherans, 
after the former were somewhat protected from molesta- 
tion by the Religions-Declaration of 1705, when England 
stirred up Prussia to energetic reprisals upon her own 
Catholic subjects for Protestant persecutions by the 
elector's government. 

England was at that time warmly interested in the 
cause of any distressed Continental Protestants. As a 
generation before she had given refuge to the fleeing 
Huguenots, so now she was prepared to take in other 
Protestants who alleged the same reasons for their 
coming. Queen Anne, a woman of most benevolent 
and kindly private character, was distantly related to the 
Palatinate electors, — Karl Ludwig, the last of the Prot- 
estant line of Simmern, being her cousin, though with 
the Catholic line (Pfalz-Neuburg) she was more distantly 
connected in blood as in religion. The assertion, " cur- 
rently reported," that Queen Anne had invited the dis- 
tressed Palatines to come to England, though it was 
" certainly believed," is proven unfounded. Perhaps 
the circulation of a book on America, with its title 
printed in golden letters, and thence called the " Golden 
Book," may have given rise to it, for this contained a 
portrait of Queen Anne. The favor which she showed 
to Kocherthal's colony of the year before had evidently 
been reported in Germany, for we find that the Board of 
Trade in one of the many meetings in which they con- 
sidered what was to be done with "the Palatines" were 
told that " Many of them were from the same county as 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

those who had gone to New York and were anxious to 
go there." 

One of the last, yet probably a determining, factors in 
the emigration was the fearful "Cold Winter" of 1708- 
1709. This was felt throughout Europe ; but in the 
desolated Rhineland it completed the devastations of 
war. The wild animals froze to death in the woods ; 
the very birds also. Wine froze in casks ; the vineyards 
and fruit-trees were destroyed ; and, worst of all, hundreds 
of the wretched inhabitants perished of cold and starva- 
tion, while their rulers, in their splendid little courts, 
amused themselves after the fashion set by the Grand 
Monarch. 

So, as soon as the fearful winter was over, in May, 
1709, bands of ragged, miserable Germans began their 
painful way down the Rhine towards the Low Countries, 
Rotterdam, and England. At first they were received 
with kindness by the benevolent people of Rotterdam, 
but as the summer wore on, and the emigration of 
" destitute families" continued, finally reaching the im- 
mense figure of fifteen thousand persons, the Lords 
Burgomasters became not unnaturally alarmed. "The 
poor pence of the city is exhausted," they wrote. Their 
High Mightinesses sent word to the Palatinate that 
England would transport no more to her shores ; two 
of the Rotterdam merchants were sent up the arms of 
the Rhine to intercept "those poor people," and a 
thousand of them were turned back. Messages were 
sent to the ministers of Holland at Cologne and Frank- 
fort to " warn the people over there not to come this 
way ;" but all produced little apparent effect. 

The mass of misery, poverty, and distress kept on its 

64 



The Great Exodus of the Palatines 

road, seemingly impelled by its own weight of woe, and 
irresistible as a force of nature. Dayrolles, the English 
minister, offered transportation for five thousand of them, 
but by June of 1709 ten thousand were said to be in 
Rotterdam awaiting a passage to England. Dayrolles 
sent over three thousand more, and tried the same 
repeated orders and advertisements which the Dutch 
government had used to stop the emigration, but with 
little result. By the end of October, 1709, about fifteen 
thousand of these " poor miserable Germans" had 
reached London, and the problem was, what to do with 
them. 

The number given above seems to be about the cor- 
rect one, but the statements of all who have written 
upon this little-known movement vary widely. An 
anonymous writer who published a now rare little book 
with the quaint title " Das Verlangte nicht Erlangte 
Canaan," gives us, in Chapter VI. of his work, a pro- 
fessedly exhaustive account of the arrival and numbers 
of the "poor Palatines." There were, he says, in all, 
thirty-two thousand four hundred and sixty-eight of 
them, and this colossal number, copied by Loher and 
accompanied by the remark that it furnishes a measure 
of Germany's misery, has been repeated by every writer 
since. But it is manifest, when we come to read of the 
provision made for the refugees, and the number sent to 
various colonies, that not more than one-half or one- 
third of this number are "accounted for." The author 
of the " unreached Canaan" makes his numbers mete up 
by the simple expedient of subtracting those provided 
for from this thirty thousand odd, and remarking that 
"these seventeen thousand all died in England." This 
5 65 



The Germans in Colonial- Times 

mortality is perfectly incredible, especially as he has 
already spoken of three thousand and sixty who died 
there. Surely twenty thousand Palatines, whose coming 
and condition excited such interest, did not die and 
"make no sign" on the history or records of the time. 
Another equally loose statement begins his apparently 
careful and detailed enumeration of the ten or more dis- 
tinct ship-loads which he mentions. The first arrival, he 
says, consisted of eighteen thousand and six persons on 
eleven ships, which would give an average of more than 
sixteen hundred passengers on each of the little ships of 
the time ; packed like herrings though they may have 
been, this exceeds probability. Everything knoivn, not 
conjectured or imagined, about the emigration points 
to fifteen thousand or less as the true figure.* 

And surely this is imposing enough when one con- 
siders what perils and difficulties these poor souls had to 
come through in order even to reach England, and that 
then they were still separated by months of journeyings 
and leagues of ocean from their goal ; for all, it seems, 
had set their faces towards the "verlangten Canaan" of 
America. 

There was much perplexity as to where and how this 
host of utterly destitute people was to be kept. Camps 

* Diffenderffer counts up the various colonists, — those who died, returned, 
and so on, — and makes the total eleven thousand five hundred, with a confessed 
discrepancy of three thousand, which would make the number fourteen 
thousand five hundred. The author of "Canaan" makes his detailed ac- 
count sum up in round numbers fourteen thousand four hundred. Another 
apparently very careful list, with the various little principalities from which 
each contingent came, amounts to fifteen thousand three hundred and thir- 
teen. As will be seen, the variation is slight, and the number given in the 
text may be regarded as approximately correct. 

66 



The Great Exodus of the Palatines 

were finally established at several points in the neighbor- 
hood of London, notably at Blackheath, where tents from 
the English military stores in the tower were erected, 
and the multitude was lodged after a fashion. Black- 
heath had seen many strange gatherings since the Dan- 
ish invaders of Britain had encamped there centuries 
before. The miserable hordes of Wat Tyler and Jack 
Cade had lain there ; the people welcomed back Henry 
V. from Agincourt on Blackheath ; regiments often en- 
camped there, and highwaymen found it a good place to 
ply their trade ; but surely never did the waste heath 
support more poverty and misery or attract greater 
crowds to gaze upon the encampment. Thither streamed 
the English folk to gaze upon the strange concourse of 
refugees, and wonder or sneer or pity, according to 
their inclinations, but often, to their honor be it said, to 
help. 

The Queen, "gracious Anna whom three realms 
obey" of Pope, showed herself both good and gracious 
to the distressed, as was her kindly wont. She gave 
them several liberal donations, provided subsistence for 
them, and presented them with " one thousand High 
Dutch Bibles." A collection was taken up for them 
throughout the kingdom. Bishop Burnet, the kindly, 
meddlesome, impulsive ecclesiastic and historian, who has 
been ridiculed as " P. P. Clerk of this parish," worked 
nobly for the distressed Palatines, having collections 
made in his diocese for them, and opposing the High 
Church projects of the Bishop of London, who would 
have had them all converted to the Church of England. 

These various charitable schemes yielded the sum 
of two thousand pounds ; many appropriations were 

67 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

made by Parliament for subsistence, transportation, etc., 
amounting altogether to more than half a million dollars 
(j^i35.00o), while charitable people gave them clothing 
and shoes, the Queen distributed coal at Christmas, and 
the commissioners, besides the gift, on the refugees' first 
reaching England, of " a loaf of a bread as white as 
snow and a Reichsgulden in money," issued to them 
every fortnight straw to lie upon. Some Indian chiefs 
of the Mohawks, then in London upon an embassy to 
the Queen, visited the camp, and, touched by what they 
saw, told the Palatines that in their own country was 
land enough and to spare, and promised them a grant of 
this land if they chose to come and make their home 
among them. This promise had important and un- 
dreamt-of consequence, as we shall see. For all this 
most of the refugees displayed a touching gratitude. 

The Lutheran and Reformed clergymen of the Ger- 
man Chapel of St. Mary in Savoy ministered to their 
spiritual wants and interested themselves for their tem- 
poral settlement. About one-half of the number were 
married couples, and two-fifths children under fourteen 
years of age. Nearly all the men were " husbandmen 
and vine-dressers," as might have been expected of emi- 
grants from the vine-draped Rhenish hills ; there were 
plenty of mechanics and artisans among them, however, 
representing the commoner trades. Several churches 
came over, led by their pastors, and there were noted 
among the emigrants, school-masters, students, and en- 
grav^ers ; people of a condition in life usually removed 
from the necessity of emigration were forced among the 
others in those calamitous times, and we hear that over- 
seers were appointed among them from those of noble 

68 



The Great Exodus of the Palatines 

birth in the company. 15ut, taking them ahogether, it is 
probable that most were as ignorant and lowly as they 
were desolate and oppressed. 

A contemporary publication gives the nationality of a 
portion of the emigrants ; from this we can see what 
countries were most untenable to their wretched inhabit- 
ants. The Palatinate has the bad eminence of yielding 
more than one-half of those enumerated ; next comes, in 
the order given, Darmstadt, Hanau — those tiny lands 
supply a surprising quota of the remainder ; then comes 
" Frankenland," probably a portion of Franconia, the 
free cities of Worms and Speyer, Alsace, and Baden, 
with a few little groups from other localities. 

A contemporary description of the life in the Palatine 
camp gives a very favorable picture : "They spend their 
time very religiously and industriously, having prayers 
morning and evening, with singing of psalms and preach- 
ing every Sunday, where both old and young appear 
very serious and devout. Some employ themselves in 
making toys of small value, which they sell to the multi- 
tudes that come daily to see them. They are contented 
with very ordinary food, their bread being brown and 
their meat of the coarsest and cheapest sort, which, with 
a few roots and herbs, they eat with much cheerfulness 
and thankfulness. Great numbers of them go every 
Sunday to their church in the Savoy, and receive the 
Sacrament of their own ministers. . . . On the whole, 
they appear to be an innocent, laborious, peaceable, 
healthy, and ingenious people, and may be rather reck- 
oned a blessing than a burden to any nation where they 
shall be settled." 

But all Englishmen did not regard the refugees with 

69 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

equal friendliness. Dean Swift, who was in London at 
this time trying to induce the Whigs to make him a 
colonial bishop, spattered some of the venom"" of his pen 
upon the " foreigners of all religions, under the name 
of Palatines, who understood no trade nor handicraft, 
yet rather chose to beg than labor, who besides infesting 
our streets, bred contagious diseases by which we lost in 
natives thrice the number of population gained in for- 
eigners," all of which was as untrue as it was bitter ; and 
certain fellows of the baser sort, following the lead of 
the great dean, showed their hostility to the beggars 
who had come to take the bread out of their mouths, 
by attacking the camp, one dark night, to the number 
of two thousand, armed with scythes, hammers, and 
axes, and were with difficulty beaten off One of the 
reasons for this animosity was that the Palatines were 
suspected by the ignorant English of being Catholics, 
and against this religion the most r^bid anti-Popery 
feeling still existed. 

It must have been in consequence of this feeling of 
hatred that the "poor distressed Palatines" issued a 
pathetic "Address." "We humbly entreat," its words 
ran, " all tradesmen not to repine at the good disposi- 
tion of her sacred Majesty and of the Quality and Gen- 
try. We Intreat you to lay aside all Reflections and 
Imprecations and ill language against us for that is 
contrary to a Christian Spirit and we do assure you it 
shall be our endeavors to act with great humility and 
gratitude and to render our prayers for you which is all 
the returns that can be made by 

"your distressed brethren 

" the Palatines." 
70 



The Great Exodus of the Palatines 

But what was to be done wath them? Here they 
were, fifteen thousand strong, utterly destitute and help- 
less. The Board of Trade wrestled with the problem all 
through the summer of 1 709, while one ship-load after 
another of the refugees accumulated upon their hands. 
They listened to propositions from various persons and 
companies who washed to secure some of these people, 
commonly, it is to be feared, only for the profit which 
was to be made out of their labor. 

The Queen offered five pounds a head to any one 
who would take Palatinate refugees and settle them 
anywhere in England, but this measure had but a modi- 
fied success. Most of the people thus disposed of 
soon returned to London, complaining of the hostility 
of the English people and the avarice of their new 
masters ; although a certain, or rather uncertain, number 
did eventually remain in England, the majority of these 
settlers finally returned in despair to Germany. Several 
hundred young men enlisted in the British army. A 
large number — probably about three thousand — died in 
England. 

At length it was resolved to select from among the 
refugees those who were Catholics, and offer them the 
alternative of becoming Protestants or being sent back 
at the Queen's expense, and with ten Reichsgulden each 
for consolation, to Germany. About five hundred 
Catholics changed their religion, and so remained in 
England. It is said that most of these converts were 
people of Protestant descent who had become Catholics, 
and their first conversion may have been more from 
force than from conviction. But three thousand five 
hundred of the German Catholics stood firm, and were 

71 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

deported. The author of "Canaan" says that "tliey 
could not be allowed to remain under the laws of the 
realm," but probably the suspicious hostility which had 
issued in the mob's attack upon the camp was what 
made their retention impossible. 

A British naval officer conceived the plan of settling 
a colony on the Scilly Islands, off the coast of Cornwall. 
Some six hundred, or, according to another account, 
sixteen hundred, Palatines were loaded upon ships bound 
for the islands. But "when the Inhabitants of that 
place received news of their coming they sent a woe- 
fully worded petition to parliament, stating they could 
not support themselves, much less the Germans who did 
not understand fishing and could not ward off hunger." 
After six weeks had passed, they were again set on land, 
and went to Germany, accompanied by their Lutheran 
pastor. 

But the Mecca towards which their prayers were 
turned was America, and an opportunity was now 
afforded a few of them to go thither. Some time pre- 
vious to the Palatine exodus the Swiss canton of Berne, 
or, according to some authorities, the persecuted Men- 
nonites in that canton, had cherished a plan of forming 
a colony in America, and had sent two commissioners, 
Christopher de Graffenried and Louis Michel, to spy out 
the land. The project, so far as it was an exclusively 
Bernese one, seems to have been abandoned. But the 
commissioners, being in London at the time of the 
refugees' arrival, were inspired by the brilliant idea of 
securing some of these people, who were literally going 
begging, for their projected settlement. Some of the 
commissioners charged with the settlement of the Pala- 

72 



The Great Exodus of the Palatines 

tines arranged for six hundred and fifty of their people 
being transported to North Carolina ; de Graffenried and 
Michel secured from the proprietors of the colony ten 
thousand acres of land, with an option upon one hun- 
dred thousand acres more when the settlement should be 
fairly started. They were to give their colonists free 
transportation, some clothing, support for a year, and 
the stock and agricultural implements necessary to work 
the land. The Palatines were ultimately to be given 
two hundred and fifty acres of land apiece. For this 
colonizing enterprise de Graffenried, to whom alone the 
land was granted, was made a baron ; according to one 
account, he received the title of " Landgrave," one of 
those which decorated the curious frame of government 
thought out by the English philosopher Locke for his 
friend the Earl of Shaftesbury, one of the proprietors 
of North Carolina. 

De Graffenried transported his colonists safely to their 
new home ; they landed in December, i/io, at the con- 
fluence of the Neuse and Trent Rivers, where they 
formed the settlement, to which they gave, in compliment 
to their Swiss leaders, the name of New Berne, now 
contracted into Newbern. All went well with the little 
colony for a time ; in two years they had made a pros- 
perous beginning, and had a good outlook towards pay- 
ing for their lands. 

But a storm was gathering of which the Germans 
suspected nothing. The Tuscarora Indians, the most 
warlike of the tribes in that part of the country, had 
been exasperated against the English, partly by the 
encroachment of the settlers under the direction of the 
Surveyor-General of the Province, Lawson. There were 

73 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

many of their race living among the whites as domestic 
servants, and with them their savage brethren formed a 
plot to fall upon and exterminate all white men ; the 
distinction between harmless Germans and hostile Eng- 
lish was of- course unknown to the Indians. 

Meanwhile, de Graffenried with his negro servant 
and Surveyor-General Lawson had gone to explore the 
country', threading the swampy forests of the Carolinian 
lowlands in a canoe. So, they came suddenly upon a 
body of professedly friendly Indians, who, nevertheless, 
detained them, upon some pretext, overnight in their 
camp. It was, though the baron and his companions 
did not suspect it, the time which had been chosen for 
the onslaught upon the white settlements. At dawn 
the Indian servants were to give the signal, their wild 
tribesmen were to fall upon the half-aroused palefaces, and 
they were to be killed with all the horrible and fantastic 
cruelty of which the red men are capable. This terrible 
plot was carried out while Baron de Graffenried and his 
companions were held prisoners ; sixty of the settlers 
of Newbern were killed and as many more dangerously 
wounded. 

In the forest, meanwhile, their leader was tried for his 
life ; Lawson, the chief enemy, and the luckless negro 
sei'vant were slaughtered, probably with all the tortures 
of Indian barbarity, and the Swiss nobleman only saved 
himself at the last moment by a lucky inspiration. He 
told the Indian chief that he was the King of the Pala- 
tines, and the Indians had no right to put to death a per- 
son of such exalted rank. After cogitation on this point 
of international law, the chief gave way. If the King 
of the Palatines would sign a paper promising not to 

74 



The Great Exodus ot the Palatines 

take from the red men any more of their hmd, and also 
to hold his subjects neutral in the war between the races, 
he might be permitted to go back to his subjects to make 
known to them these terms and to insure their neutrality. 
We may be certain that de Graffenried gladly made these 
or any other required promises, and he went his way, 
out of the very jaws of a horrible death, back to his 
crushed and half-destroyed colony. 

During the war which ensued the baron did, indeed, 
observe the promised neutrality, though he privately >^ 
gave information to the English governor of such of the •^' 
savages' plans as came to his knowledge. "His neu- 
trality," wrote the governor, "is of great benefit to the ^^^ 
province, as he can expose the designs of the Indians, •- 
though he runs the risk of paying dear for it, if they eve'f, 
come to know of it." Some time elapsed before the 
Tuscaroras were finally subdued, but it was so thoroughly 
done that most of the tribe left the South, went to the 
province of New York, and there joined the confederacy 
of the "Five Nations," which by this accession became 
the familiar "Six Nations" of our colonial history. -^ 

But before this happened. Baron de Graffenried, per- , 
haps discouraged by his experiences, left his colony and 
returned to Europe. The title to the land had been 
given to him alone, and he mortgaged it to an English- 
man in payment of a debt. The unfortunate colonists 
petitioned the Colonial Assembly some years afterwards 
for relief, and their lands were, it seem.'7^"'oecured to them. 
Michel, the other commissioner, remamed in Newbern, 
where his descendants have anglicized themselves into 
Mitchell. Descendants of Baron de Graffenried are also 
found in the " Old North State." 

75 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

Some of de Graffenried's deserted colonists, terrified 
and disheartened, quitted North Carolina and took ship 
for the North. Misfortune followed them ; they were 
wrecked at the mouth of the Rappahannock River in 
Virginia. But this mischance was a blessing in disguise, 
for it cast them into the strong and capable arms of 
Governor Alexander Spotswood, of the colony of Vir- 
ginia. This energetic Scotchman — born at Tangier, a 
soldier of the great Marlborough, wounded at Blenheim — 
was now finishing his stirring career, in the New World, 
by exploring tramontane Virginia, founding the order 
of the Knights of the Golden Horseshoe among his ad- 
venturous comrades, and establishing the first iron fur- 
nace in North America at his plantation up the Rappa- 
T^iannock. The " Tubal-Cain of Virginia," as he was 
called, received this flotsam of Germans with delight. 
"I have placed here a number of Protestant Germans," 
he writes the Lord Commissioners of Trade, ' ' built them 
a Fort, and finished it with two pieces of Cannons and 
some Ammunition, which will awe the Stragling parties 
of Northern Indians and be a good Barrier for all that 
part of the country. . . . They are generally such as 
have been employed in their own country as Miners and 
say they are satisfyed there are divers kinds of minerals 
in those -upper parts of the Country where they are set- 
tled and even a good appearance of Silver Oar." 

The governor named his plantation, in honor of his 
new settlers, " Gfjrmanna." Three years after, the col- 
ony received an accession of eighty persons, who had 
suffered a variety of misfortunes which throw light on 
what emigration was, or might be, in those days. Held 
in an English port for the captain's debt, their provision 

76 



The Great Exodus of the Palatines 

failed before the long voyage ended ; many starved to 
death ; they were wrecked on the Virginia coast, and the 
perfidious captain sold them to slavery or as redemp- 
tioners to pay their passage. Fortunately, they were 
bought by Spotswood and settled at Germanna, " where 
they soon throve well." Subsequently the settlement 
was removed ten miles farther up the river. 

Twenty years after, Colonel Byrd, passing through the 
place, made merry at Governor Spotswood's " enchanted 
castle, a baker's dozen of ruinous tenements with a 
chapel that had been burned by some pious people with 
the intent to get one built nearer their own homes." 
Spotswood himself, turned out of his office by the in- 
trigues of opponents, died "among his own people" at 
Germanna. From some of these wrecked and plundered 
colonists of de Graffenried, in their new and more pros- 
perous home, was descended James Lawson Kemper, 
soldier of the Civil War and Governor of Virginia. 

Of the various colonies sent out from the camp of 
the Palatines at London, the largest and ultimately the 
most successful "plantation," to give it the name often 
used at the time, was that of the Germans sent to 
Ireland. In all nearly four thousand colonists were sent 
thither, and though some returned to Germany and 
others finally joined the settlers in New York, it remained 
one of the largest settlements of these destitute people. 
The first section was sent off in August of 1709, .just 
after the New Berne colony had sailed; and before the 
departure and return of those sent to ihe Scilly Islands. 
Other companies were sent from time to time for six 
months. They had their share of tribulation, discour- 
agement, deception, and ill-treatment by the English 

77 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

speculators who had them in charge, but they battled 
through. They were settled in the vicinity of Limerick 
on some waste-land, where they soon caused the wilder- 
ness to blossom as the rose. Most of them linen-weavers 
by trade, they had an important part in founding the 
Irish linen industry. They built large substantial houses 
with gardens and orchards. When Wesley visited their 
settlement of Court Mattrass in 1758 he found it built in 
the form of a square, around " a pretty large preaching 
place." They have left the impress of their character — 
thrifty, industrious, and conspicuously honest — upon the 
whole surrounding district. 

From Court Mattrass in 1760 there emigrated to New 
York a young Palatine, Philip Embury, a local preacher 
who, assisted by a pious school-master of his own people, 
had ministered to the little flock of Wesley's followers 
in Ireland. He was accompanied by his wife and a few 
related families, among them his cousin, Barbara Heck, 
and her husband. Embury was undoubtedly a good 
man, but perhaps of a timid character, little disposed to 
take the initiative in anything. In the new land, amid 
the struggles to establish themselves which awaited the 
little company of poor Palatine weavers, Philip Embury 
demitted his humble ministry. At this juncture there 
''arose a mother in Israel," — Barbara Heck. Coming 
one day into a neighbor's house, she found some Pala- 
tines engaged in card-playing. To the pious Wesleyan 
woman this was^a threatening of perdition. She threw 
the cards in the ' ire, and left the terrified card-players 
to go immediately to Embury's house. There she knelt 
at the feet of the young preacher, beseeching him 
with tears no longer to be silent, but to preach to his 

78 



The Great Exodus of the Palatines 

backsliding countrymen. " God will require our blood 
at your hand," she declared. Embury responded to 
the appeal to his slumbering sense of duty. Barbara 
Heck went out, collected four other like-minded ones, 
and to this little company Embury preached, they sang 
hymns, a "class" was formed, and Embury became its 
leader, — the first class-leader of American Methodism. 
By Barbara Heck's exertions money was raised in spite 
of discouragements, a small, plain chapel built, help came 
to them from other Methodist converts, and from this 
poor Palatine and his handful of hearers sprang the 
seven million of the great Methodist Church. Of the 
simple German matron whose conscientious faithfulness 
was the seed of so much it has been testified : " She 
lived much in prayer and had strong faith and therefore 
God used her for great good." 

Of all Queen Anne's proteges whom she sent to her 
colonies in America the largest number were directed 
towards New York. Perhaps the influence of Pastor 
Kocherthal is responsible for the selection of the place ; 
but the chief idea was to employ the Palatines in the 
production of tar and turpentine, naval stores of which 
the " Mistress of the Seas" stood in great need, for all 
must be brought from other nations. The trifling draw- 
back that these husbandmen and vine-dressers from the 
Rhineland were .entirely unacquainted with the process 
of making ships' stores seems not to have occurred 
to the authorities, who went with cheerful inexperience 
about the work of founding the new enterprise. The 
colony was to be taken out and settled upon its lands by 
Governor Hunter, lately appointed to the government of 
New York. Liberal conditions were made for the trans- 

79 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

portation and settlement of these people : their fare was 
paid, they were to be supported for a year after arrival, 
tools and materials for house-building given them, and 
forty acres of land ultimately assigned them. But they 
were to be divided into gangs of workers, and all the 
products of their labor were to go to the Queen to recom- 
pense her for the expense she had incurred in their 
maintenance. 

Some time in the earlier months of the )'ear 1710 — 
the exact date is uncertain — the expedition, consisting 
of ten ships, carr}'ing altogether about three thousand 
souls, left England, and on June 13 arrived in the harbor 
of New York. A large number of the poor emigrants 
had died upon the passage, — nearly twenty per cent ; 
almost all the children had succumbed to the hardships 
of an ocean voyage in those times. One of the Palatine 
ships, wrecked accidentally or by design upon the coast 
of Long Island, has given rise to the legend which Wliit- 
tier has immortalized in verse in his pathetic "Wreck 
of the Palatine." But when the miserable people were 
at last in "the haven where they would be," so much 
sickness still raged among them that the frightened in- 
habitants of New York insisted upon their being en- 
camped on Governor's Island until danger of infection 
was over, and many died there. About eight}'' orphan 
children cast upon tlie charity of the ^commilnit}' were 
apprenticed by Governor Hunter, and among these ap- 
pears the name of John Peter Zenger, afterwards so 
celebrated in the histor}' of the liberty of the press in 
America. 

The governor endeavored to find a place on which 
to settle the remainder of his colony, and finally selected 

80 



The Great Exodus of the .Palatines 

a tract, part of Livingston Manor, which was recom- 
mended to him by the proprietor as very suitable for 
his purpose. In this it is probable that Hunter — a bluff, 
ignorant, honest soldier, and nothing else — was deceived 
by Livingston, who was a canny Scot grown rich through 
unscrupulous practices as Indian agent, and even — it was 
suspected — as a partner of Captain Kidd in the latter's 
piratical ventures. The Earl of Clarendon called Robert 
Livingston "a very ill man," and such poor Governor 
Hunter seems to have found him to his cost. 

The Palatines, divided into six companies with head- 
men put over them who were appointed justices, were 
finall}^ sent, in the autumn of i7io, to the scene of their 
future labors. They were settled in two villages, — East 
Camp, now Germantown, and West Camp, whose name 
still survives. ]\Iost of the settlements in the west were 
embraced in the town of Saugerties. After the troubles 
in East Camp, the settlers there founded Rhinebeck. It 
may be noted that most of the trouble later experienced 
was localized in the eastern settlements in the Manor, 
while the people upon the west bank of the Hudson 
pursued the even tenor of their way, sharing the blessing 
of those who have no histor)-. 

Of course, nothing could be done until spring, so 
through the long winter they were supported in idleness, 
and "Satati found some mischief still for idle hands to 
do." The more industrious formed a school for the 
instruction of the few poor children who had survived the 
sufferings of the journey ; they also erected houses, or, 
more properly, huts, for shelter. The next summer 
they were too busy in sowing grain for their future 
sustenance to give much attention to the provision of 
6 8i 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

the tar which was the raison d'etre of the colony. They 
were also interrupted by the expedition against Montreal 
in this year, on which three hundred of them served their 
adopted country, faithfully it appears, though they did 
not receive the promised pay, and were disarmed as soon 
as they returned, for fear that they would rebel against 
the government if armed. It had been arranged that 
four hundred of the Palatines settled around New York 
should be recalled to the camps when their help was 
needed, but ultimately Hunter was glad to be freed 
from the obligation of subsisting these, and they were 
left to support themselves wherever they might have 
settled. At the end of the third summer which the 
Palatines had spent in America, Hunter, having " ex- 
hausted both substance and credit," sent despairing 
orders to the East Camp to have the people called 
together and told that they must now "shift for them- 
selves ;" he could no longer support the colony. 

The colonists were in despair. Winter was at hand 
and starvation seemed imminent. In their extremity 
they remembered that when in camp, in London, at the 
first beginning of their weary wanderings, they had been 
visited by some Mohawk chiefs, who had promised them 
a portion of rich and fertile land called " Schorie." For 
this — literally the promised land — a number of the colo- 
nists now set out. Their headmen — "chiefs," as they 
are sometimes called in apparent imitation of their 
Indian friends — ^went first under the leadership of the 
elder Weiser, and asked the little band of Indians settled 
in the valley for land. This was given them, and the 
Indians always showed themselves friendly to the little 
company of Germans. They guided them through the 

82 



The Great Exodus of the Palatines 

forest, used for them the red men's woodcraft by point- 
ing out edible roots and herbs, and when the first white 
children were born in the valley, gave the poor German 
mothers fur robes on which to lie. 

The German " chiefs" bought from the Indian ones 
land for the colonists. In a short time fifty families 
left the unlucky scene of their servitude and came into 
the Schoharie Valley, making a road fifteen miles long 
through the trackless forest. The governor sent after 
them an order "not to goe upon the land and he who 
did so should be declared a Rebell." It does not 
appear why Hunter, who had just told them that they 
might go anywhere and "shift for themselves," should 
have breathed out threatenings when the Palatines went 
to Schoharie ; but so it was, and his resentment was im- 
placable and undying. But the Germans "seriously 
weighed matters amongst themselves and finding no 
Hkelihood of subsisting elsewhere . . . found themselves 
under the fatall necessity of disregarding the Gov*"^ re- 
sentment, that being to all more eligible than Starving." 

In March of the next year, 171 3, a large number of 
their kindred joined them, breaking a way through 
snow three feet deep, and the numbers of the settlers 
were increased to nearly seven hundred people. 

Seven villages were laid out, named after their seven 
"chiefs," huts erected, and a tailor acted as lay preacher 
and read service ; in the total lack of any implements for 
tillage, sickles did duty for ploughs, and they ground corn 
in stone mills after the Indian fashion ; as there was not 
a horse or cow in the settlement, nor a wheelbarrow, 
they packed their few belongings into the valley on their 
backs, like our miners of the Klondike. In the same 

83 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

way salt was brought lunetecn miles from Schenectady ; 
the first seed wheat for the little settlement was carried 
in the same fashion, and we are glad to know that it re- 
paid its transportation with a yield of eighty-five-fold. 
For a generation, until the first mill in Schoharie was 
built, the pioneers, men and women, carried their grain 
upon their backs to Schenectady to have it ground into 
meal, large companies of them going together and 
camping overnight in the woods on the way. 

During the first hard winter of the little handful just 
escaped from Hunter's camp on the Hudson, Weiser, 
one of the " chiefs," was asked by his Indian friends to let 
his son, the afterwards well-known Conrad Weiser, spend 
the winter among the red men that he might learn their 
language. This was a proposition which was equally 
dangerous to accept or refuse, but Weiser trusted his 
son, as half hostage, half pupil, to their savage friends, 
and the future interpreter of Pennsylvania was returned 
to him in the spring safe and sound, having narrowly 
escaped starvation and death at the hands of drunken 
braves, but with a perfect knowledge of the Indian 
language and, better still, the way to Indian hearts and 
minds ; probably never was a severe apprenticeship 
better rewarded. 

To the common trials of pioneer life, in the case of 
these harried Germans, was added the unsleeping hostil- 
ity of the government. Their land was granted away 
from them thrice, and these proprietors endeavored to 
settle on their grants, or sell them to the Palatines or 
dispossess the latter. To most of this worrying perse- 
cution the Palatines offered the passive resistance of 
abiding upon their lands ; but finally they rebelled, drove 



The Great Exodus of the Palatines 

off the Albany sheriff who attempted to eject them, and 
tried in vain to worry out a persistent Dutchman who 
settled on their lands. 

After five years of this warfare the Germans decided 
to send representatives to England to make an appeal 
there for their rights. They selected the elder Weiser 
and two others to go to London and lay their case before 
the Board of Trade. The delegates took ship for Eng- 
land, but were captured in Delaware Bay by pirates, who 
tortured and flogged Weiser until they extorted from 
him all the money with which the delegates had been 
supplied. Landed penniless in London, they were soon 
thrown into a debtors' prison, and Weiser's two com- 
panions died from the effects of ill treatment there. 
Weiser remained in London about five years, endeavor- 
ing to obtain for his poor people a title to the lands 
which they had settled with so much peril and hardship, 
but in vain. Governor Hunter, who arrived in England 
during Weiser's stay there, used his considerable per- 
sonal influence against the "poor Palatine," and finally 
even the courageous and persistent German gave up in 
despair. He had become convinced that there was no 
justice to be had for the Palatines in New York, and 
advised his countrymen to go to Pennsylvania. 

We do not know exactly what influenced Weiser 
in favor of the Quaker province ; his son says that 
Governor Keith of Pennsylvania was in Albany upon 
Indian business, and "hearing of the unrest of the Ger- 
mans, lost no time to inform them of the freedom and 
justice accorded to their countrymen in Pennsylvania." 

But the settlers of Schoharie were not all of one 
mind ; some desired to stay in their hardly won clcar- 

85 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

ings, and so submitted to necessity and bought their land 
again from the government. They Hved a peaceful life 
after this in their secluded fertile valle\- ; almost the only 
man of note from among them was that William Bouck, 
Governor of New York in the forties, who was descended 
from the first of those Palatine children born a week 
after the entrance of the little community into the valley, 
whose mother was wrapped from the cold in the Indian 
gift of furs. 

Some of the Schoharie settlers were willing to accept 
the offer of the new governor, Burnett, of lands else- 
where, and they, under the leadership of one of the seven 
chiefs, Elias Garloch, emigrated to the Mohawk Valley, 
and were followed by such a stream of emigration and 
so increased and multiplied as to make the Mohawk for 
thirty miles a German river ; from Herkimer and Ger- 
man Flats through Mannheim, Oppenheim, Minden to 
Palatine Bridge, Canajoharie and Stone Arabia, names 
of places or people testify to the Germanizing of this 
country. The story of the French invasions and of 
Herkimer's glorious death at Oriskany make this lovely 
valley classic and epic land to the annalist of the colonial 
Germans ; but it is "another story" which must be told 
in its place. Let us follow the tale of the exodus to 
Pennsylvania. 

About two-thirds of the Schoharie people, unwilling 
to buy their land, and also to be settled on the Mohawk 
at the governor's pleasure, started for Pennsylvania, 
feeling that there at last might be found a refuge from 
oppression and injustice. Under the guidance of their 
faithful Indian friends, they cut a road through the for- 
ests from Schoharie to the head-waters of the Susque- 

86 



The Great Exodus of the Palatines 

hanna ; there they built rafts and canoes, placed on them 
the women and children and their furniture, and floated 
down the river, the men driving the cattle along the 
land. Arrived at the point where the Swatara empties 
into the Susquehanna, they ascended this stream until 
the expedition reached the mouth of the Tulpehockcn. 
Here the Germans selected their land and settled, finally, 
after fourteen years of wandering from place to place — 
from the Palatinate to London, from London over-seas 
to the camps on the Hudson, thence escaping to Scho- 
harie, they were finally at rest in Pennsylvania. The 
story of this exodus of these poor Palatines, cast down 
but not destroyed, baffled, oppressed, plundered, but 
never discouraged, is a tale with few parallels, and one 
of its most marvellous incidents is this journey through 
the forests ; yet the people themselves seem not to have 
thought it anything worthy of note. 

Of course, they owed much to their Indian friends, 
with whom they seem always to have preserved a praise- 
worthy amity, probably owed largely to the influence of 
both the Weisers. Neither of these men came with the 
settlers to Tulpehocken in 1723. Five years after the 
first emigration, the Tulpehocken colony received a large 
accession from Schoharie, but even then Conrad Weiser 
did not accompany them, but came independently a year 
later. 

His father onl)' journeyed to Pennsylvania twenty-five 
years after, an old man of ninety, who came to end his 
days with " his Joseph," the son who had then attained a 
place of honor and trust in his adopted state. Muhlen- 
berg gives a touching picture of the old patriarch's 
death. "In the year 1746," writes Muhlenberg, "my 

87 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

wife's grandfather, the old Conrad Weiser, came to my 
house; he had lived in New York since 1710. The 
reasons of his coming were : first, it was vety dangerous 
to live at his place as in the present war-times the French 
Indians rove about and kill the English subjects in a 
cruel manner." He then describes the practice of scalp- 
ing to the fathers in Europe, and continues the story of 
the old Weiser's coming. "As several Germans in his 
neighborhood had been massacred and were treated thus, 
he was unwilling to give his gray head into the hands 
of the savages. He desired, too, to see his children and 
children's children once more, and to speak with me of 
the way of salvation. He was so wearied by his long 
fatiguing journey and his great age, that he was nearly 
dead when brought to my house. But he revived again 
and in half-broken words began to pray. His eyes were 
very dim, his hearing gone, so that I could not speak 
much with him, but I could not listen to him without 
tears of joy. I had everything quieted around, so that 
he did not know or notice that any one was present, 
that he alone and in spirit might hold converse with the 
omnipresent God." After recounting "the short edify- 
ing conversation" which he had with the old man, and 
his partaking of the sacrament, Muhlenberg says, " In 
the meanwhile my father-in-law (Conrad Weiser, the in- 
terpreter) sent a wagon and a bed, had him brought to 
him fifty miles further up the country and when he had 
blessed us, he reached the place with great fatigue and 
living yet a short time with his Joseph in Goshen, he fell 
asleep amid the affectionate prayers and sighs of his 
children and children's children standing about him, 
after wandering on this pilgrimage between eighty and 



The Great Exodus of the Palatines 

ninety years." The old man might have said with the 
patriarch to whom Muhlenberg compares him, ** Few 
and evil have the days of the years of my life been." 
After the toils and dangers, injustice and suffering of 
his emigration to America, his settlement in New York, 
his perilous and unavailing journey to London to get jus- 
tice for his people, it is good to think of his pilgrimage 
ending in the house of his beloved and honored son, 
with peace and prayer and love. 

This settlement on Tulpehocken Creek was then the 
remotest outpost of white colonization in Pennsylvania. 
But it did not long remain so. The tide of emigration 
was setting more and more strongly towards Pennsyl- 
vania as the only safe place to which Germans might 
emigrate. The region of country into which these 
adventurous pioneers had been so strangely yet safely 
conducted was one which afterwards became a very 
stronghold of the Pennsylvania Germans. When subse- 
quently erected into a county it was given the name of 
Berks — "alt Barks" the German affectionately calls it in 
his dialect. 

The eastern portion had furnished another nucleus 
for settlement, when de Turck, a Huguenot who had 
first sought refuge in the Palatinate, then in New York, 
finally decided, about five years previous to the emi- 
gration from Schoharie, to transfer himself, his family, 
and a small band of friends to Pennsylvania. There 
had been a constant, if small, influx of individuals 
into the future Berks County, beginning about the 
time of the two emigrations from Schoharie, and so 
the fertile country rapidly filled with its characteristic 
Pennsylvania German population. It would seem that 

89 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

there was no emigration by communities, with the single 
exception of the Tulpehocken settlers ; each family came 
alone, probably influenced by the favorable report of 
Pennsylvania which went back gradually across the ocean 
and penetrated each little community and influenced 
one man here, one there, to a hazard of new fortunes in 
the New World. Not only the praises of Pennsylvania 
must have influenced this small but constant stream to 
flow, but as well the unfavorable accounts from all the 
other directions in which the Great Exodus of Queen 
Anne's time sought to go. The massacres in North 
Carolina, the injustice experienced in New York, the 
sufferings at the first foundation of the colony in Ire- 
land, all contrasted with the good fortunes of the Ger- 
mans in the land of Penn. 

One of the most unfortunate colonies was not, it is 
true, part of the Great Exodus. This was the experi- 
ment in Louisiana, begun under the glamour of that 
curious antitype of De Lesseps and Barney Barnato — 
John Law. This fantastic financier had just then set all 
France wild by his speculative miracles. With all the 
revenues of French taxation in his hands, princes and 
nobles bowing before him for an opportunity to make 
their fortunes by a lucky operation in the shares of his 
"System," with the Western Company of the Indies 
formed to monopolize the colonial trade of France and 
rival, if not crush, the British East India Company, Law 
yet found time for a little private enterprise in coloniza- 
tion. He took up a " duchy," a concession in the prov- 
ince of Louisiana which he was so industriously exploit- 
ing, and " purchased from one of the princes of Germany 
twelve thousand Germans to colonize" his new posses- 
go 



The Great Exodus of the Palatines 

sions. Not nearly this number ever arrived, and perhaps 
the fact of the " purchase" is equally erroneous, but so 
it is stated by Penicault in his annals of the little colony. 

The Germans on their arrival in October, 17 19, were 
first landed at New Biloxi, where, owing to the non- 
arrival of provision -ships, the poor colonists almost 
starved ; many of them ate poisonous food in their ig- 
norance and extremity and were found lying dead. 
From this place of misery they were transported up the 
Mississippi to the farthest point of French settlement, 
— the Germans seemingly being considered the best 
pioneers, — and were settled at "Arcansas," where they 
built homes, being most of them married men, in which 
they differed from the soldiers and vagabonds who formed 
an undesirably large proportion of the first French 
colonists. 

But just as their post was becoming established and 
flourishing, news reached them from Europe of the ruin 
of Law, the crash which had followed his daring specu- 
lations and driven him a fugitive over the continent. 
The settlers, dismayed at the fall of their master, started 
for New Orleans, hoping to return to their German 
homes, but the government would not permit the escape 
of such useful and industrious citizens as they had already 
proved themselves to be. It settled them again, inde- 
pendently and not in a colony, at the place which still 
bears in their honor the name of Cote d'AUemande. 
A French missionary, encamping "aux Allemands" in 
1727, found "great poverty visible in their dwellings ;" 
but the place soon became a garden spot through 
their German thrift and hard work. Still, it was evident 
that these half-tropical countries were not for the Ger- 

91 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

mans ; then, too, the Louisiana authorities exacted that 
all settlers in the lands of his Most Catholic Majesty- 
should be Catholic likewise ; and the thoughts of " those 
intending for America" in Germany, warned by the 
experiences of their brethren in New York and in the 
South, turned more and more exclusively to Penn's 
province, where were found freedom, a temperate climate, 
the society of their fellow-countrymen, liberality in the 
dealings of the government, and, most valued of all, 
religious freedom. 



92 



CHAPTER IX 

PEQUAE AND THE MENNONITES 

We have seen the settlement of Berks County begin- 
ning in its eastern and western part almost simultaneously. 
For some reason the population of Berks was largely 
made up of the " church people" — Lutherans predomi- 
nantly — in contradistinction to the people of another 
county settled by German pioneers, — that is, Lancaster. 
This was from the beginning a stronghold of the " sects," 
and first and foremost both in primacy of settlement 
and subsequent strength were the Mennonites. 

These peaceful people had been the pioneers of Ger- 
mantown, and from there, in the years which had followed 
Pastorius's foundation of the " German township," they 
had spread, slowly and quietly, as beseemed the sect, 
over the contiguous territory, the present county of 
Montgomery. But now re-enforcements arrived and did 
not tarry in the neighborhood of the Skippack and the 
Perkiomen, but pushed on to the frontier, where land was 
cheap and plentiful. 

The impulse to this renewed Mennonite emigration 
came from a recrudescence of persecution in Switzerland 
directed against the " defenceless Christians." It is 
melancholy to observe that the free Swiss amid their 
mountains were not lovers of liberty in religious matters, 
and for the centuries since Anabaptist became a name 
of terror and reproach, an almost constant persecution 
had been waged against these feeble folk in the Alps. 

93 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

Sometimes the zeal of the authorities slept, again it 
capriciously awakened. Just now occurred one of these 
times of renewed vigilance. 

In the spring of 1709 a few families of Mennonites — 
Swiss exiles who had sought a later refuge in Worms 
and Frankenthal, but had been driven thence — arrived 
in Rotterdam, and made themselves known there to the 
"Committee on Foreign Needs," who were charged, 
during an existence of more than eighty years, with the 
relief of their persecuted co-religionists outside the tol- 
erant country of Holland. The hearts of the commit- 
tee warmed to them : " they are altogether very poor 
men who intend to seek a better place of abode in 
Pennsylvania," they said of them, and recommended 
them to English friends in London, who also "helped 
them liberally" to the extent of fifty pounds. The 
"poor men" went on their way to Penn's province, 
pushing into the wilderness "about sixty miles from 
Philadelphia, where they proved quiet and industrious," 
as James Dickinson testified of them. 

They were quaint, simple people, the men wearing 
long, red caps, the women no head-dress but a sort of 
Scottish snood, "a string to keep the hair from the 
face." Among them was a certain Meylin, who was the 
descendant of a martyr, Hans Meylin, who had died for 
his faith in Switzerland many years before ; the son of 
this colonist was the first gunsmith of Lancaster County, 
rather a strange trade for one of this peace-loving sect ; 
another son fell under the spell of the Ephrata com- 
munity, and became Brother Amos in that cloister. But 
we anticipate. 

The little colony of eight families was but just settled, 

94 



Pequae and the Mcnnonites 

huts were built, and land on Pequae Creek taken up when 
they felt an impulse to share with those persecuted 
brethren whom they had left behind the good news of 
their refuge in the forests of America. They decided 
to send some one to Europe, and, casting lots in the true 
Mennonite fashion, the lot fell upon their preacher and 
leader, Hans Herr. The brethren were dismayed at the 
prospect of being left alone "in Pequae," when Martin 
Kendig, another prominent man of the little circle, 
offered himself to go in Herr's stead. The offer was 
thankfully accepted. Kendig returned to Europe, and 
in the next year came back to Pequae, the leader of a 
new band of seekers after "freedom to worship God." 

Meanwhile, in Bern the old persecuting spirit had re- 
vived. The magistrates of Bern had thrown many of 
the "defenceless Christians" into prison, where, in the 
terrible winter of 1709, whose severities were long re- 
membered, many of the poor prisoners succumbed. The 
council was minded to put to death, by due process of 
law, those who were left, but some of the councillors 
"could not consent to such cruelty," so they sent them 
down the Rhine by boat to be deported to Pennsylvania. 
At Mannheim, in the Palatinate, the women and children, 
the old and sick, were put ashore, but a score of the 
men were taken on by their guards as far as Nymwegen 
in Holland. Here they were free, on touching the soil 
of that country of liberty, and went to appeal to the 
Mennonite brethren in that town for help. The preacher 
there wrote, " After they were entirely refreshed, they 
departed though they moved with difficulty, because 
stiffened from their long imprisonment. They returned 
to the Palatinate to seek their wives and children who 

95 



The Germans in Colon iiil Times 

are scattered everywhere in Switzerland, in Alsace, and 
in. the Palatinate, and they know not where they are to 
be found. They were very patient and cheerful under 
oppression, though all their worldly goods were taken 
away. They were naturally very rugged people, who 
could endure hardships ; they wore long and unshaven 
beards, disordered clothing, great shoes which were 
heavily hammered with iron and large nails ; they were 
very zealous to serve God with prayer and reading and 
in other ways and very innocent in all their doings. 
But we could hardly talk with them, because their 
speech is rude and uncouth and they have difficulty 
in understanding any one who does not speak just 
their way." 

These Swiss brethren returned to the Palatinate and 
tried to find a home there, but after an endurance of 
seven years, concluded that they could not hope for 
peace or tolerance where all depended upon the whims 
of the prince or his officials, and in 1717 the wanderers 
set out for Pennsylvania, the great asylum of the op- 
pressed, and at length we find them at peace among 
their brethren on Pequae. 

In 1726 another large emigration of Palatinate Men- 
nonites took place, probably to the same district of 
country, and the Committee on Foreign Needs was in a 
strait betwixt two : their sympathies were much excited 
for their " brethren and fellow-believers," yet they feared 
to be overwhelmed by a tide of emigration from the 
Pfalz, far beyond their means to assist. So they passed 
many resolutions declining to help, yet when a company 
of " friends" appeared, their faces set towards the prom- 
ised land of religious liberty, they compassionately 

96 



Pequae and the Mennonites 

" considered whether it would be possible for them to 
arrange for the many and great expenses of the passage." 
Finally, in 1732, the committee refused any more to 
help intending emigrants, and requested the friends in 
Pennsylvania to have notice given in their churches that 
no one should write his acquaintances in Germany 
urging emigration or describing the advantages of the 
land. This had the desired effect, and the brethren of 
the Netherlands were freed from a burden beyond their 
means to support. The measures seem hard, but were 
no doubt necessary. The request to the congregations 
in America shows how the large persistent stream of 
emigration took its rise and course by a hundred, nay, a 
thousand, little rills of personal testimony from those 
persecuted people who had at last found a safe harbor 
in the land of Penn. 



97 



CHAPTER X 

THE DUNKERS AND EPHRATA 

Some years after the emigration of the Mennonites 
into Lancaster County, another persecuted sect, whose 
principles are in many ways simikir to those of the 
"defenceless Christians," came to the same haven of 
refuge. But these sectaries, instead of a history reach- 
ing back for centuries, had a very recent origin. 

It was in 1708 that Alexander Mack, a miller living 
near Schwarzenau in the little principality of Wittgen- 
stein, became convinced that the beliefs and practices 
of the established churches upon the subject of baptism 
were wrong. Eight others, men and women, were of 
his own way of thinking. He baptized them all in the 
river Eder, having concluded from his study of the 
Scriptures that baptism by immersion was the only right 
mode. From this peculiarity they were nicknamed 
" the Tunkcrs," from the rather contemptuous German 
word meaning " to dip ;" they themselves prefer the 
expression "Brethren." The tenets which the mil- 
ler of Schwarzenau and his associates thought out for 
their little brotherhood were strikingly like those of the 
Mennonites, with the single exception of their insistence 
upon immersion. The Mennonites, while also rejecting 
infant baptism, have never made a point of the manner 
of its administration. "The Brethren" agreed with 
them in their opposition to war, to lawsuits and judicial 
oaths, and to richness of dress or furniture. 

9S 



The Dunkers and Ephrata 

The httle society grew and prospered, but the authori- 
ties objecting to these pubhc immersions in the Eder, 
they withdrew to Crefcld, the old home of the German- 
town colonists. Here they found toleration, and, per- 
haps in consequence of this, — for persecution is the 
breath of life to sectarianism, — they also found luke- 
warmness and dissension. 

Part of the little band came to Pennsylvania in 17 19, 
led by their preacher, Peter Becker, and ten years later 
the rest followed. They settled among the other Ger- 
mans, if we may judge by the places which Peter 
Becker and a few others visited on " a religious journey" 
— as Friends say — which was undertaken in 1723 to 
kindle again the old flame of devotion in the hearts of 
the scattered brethren. It was to the banks of the 
Schuylkill, to Falkner's Swamp, Oley, Concstoga, that 
these apostles of the Dunkers went, and at Pequae that 
they encountered a man who was to be the beginner of 
one of the strangest phenomena of colonial times in 
Pennsylvania, — Conrad Beissel, the head of the cloister at 
Ephrata. 

He was a Palatine by birth, a baker by trade, who 
had come under the Pietistic influences so rife there. 
He would have been merely a harmless, if crack-brained, 
fanatic if he had not attracted the notice and the perse- 
cution of the too orthodox authorities of Heidelberg. 
Exiled from the city, with a halo of persecution about 
him, the young baker consorted with the Dunkers, 
who were not sufficiently separatistic for him ; even 
the loosely constituted sect of these Baptists was a 
"church," a Babylon, an abomination, and various 
other unpleasant things to a thorough separatist of 

L.fC. 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

Beissel's kind. He sympathized rather with the " In- 
spired," the convulsed followers of the wild prophets of 
the Cevennes, Avho had taken refuge in Germany after 
the failure of their frantic revolt ; even Spener listened 
for a time to the hysteric inspirations of prophetic maid- 
servants ; and the inspired saddler Rock, a pet of the 
little Pietist court of the princes of Biidingen, was a 
friend of Beissel. But Germany was too worldly for 
our hero, and in 1720 the staid Puritans of Boston en- 
tertained, if not angels, then prophets unawares, when 
Beissel and a few friends landed there and straightway 
set out for Pennsylvania. 

Here Beissel found his Dunker friends grown cold 
and worldly in the pressing occupations of building log 
huts, making clearings, and establishing themselves in 
the New World ; they had, he said, " hung up their 
holy calling on a nail." True, Peter Becker, their 
preacher and leader, made a journey through parts of 
Pennsylvania and great revivals followed him. Beissel 
was baptized by Becker, though not in sympathy with 
him, and defended his course by the modest and rever- 
ent parallel that Christ allowed himself to be baptized 
by John. 

But Beissel soon founded a new and schismatic com- 
munity among the Dunkers on Pequae, where he had 
by this time settled as a hermit, with a few like-minded 
brethren living near him, each in his little log hut. 
Within a few years after his arrival he had come to a 
consciousness of differing views on many points. He 
taught, with extraordinary mystical language, the praise- 
worthy virtue of celibacy, the keeping of the Sabbath 
on the seventh day of the week, and urged all his 



The Dunkers and Ephrata 

followers to leave the world for a hermit's life in the 
wilderness, "the upper country known as Conestoga." 

Beissel, though his own adherents acknowledged that 
" his leadership was a stern and strange one," seems 
to have had an inexplicable influence over men and 
women far superior to himself He persuaded a well- 
to-do farmer to build a house for his community on 
condition that the donor's two daughters should have a 
perpetual home in this convent ; he ruled his followers 
with a rod of iron, and scarcely a whimper of dissent 
was audible ; men of affairs like Israel Eckerlin or the 
far more gifted Conrad Weiser, men of extraordinary 
learning and piety like Beissel's successor, Peter Miller, 
put themselves under his yoke, while enthusiastic girls 
like Annchen and Maria Eichcr, proud women such as 
she who was known first as Thekla, and after her quelled 
revolt as Anastasia, the reborn, yielded obedience to 
him ; the wife of the elder Christoph Saur left home 
and husband and child to become Beissel's disciple, 
while hundreds of devout and devoted souls of simpler 
mould were his followers, heart and soul, and gave up 
their lives and property to his community. 

In a decade after Beissel's arrival in America he had 
founded a community of celibates numbering at least 
eighty members ; in its palmiest days the cloister had 
three hundred inmates. A number of buildings were 
erected for the use of the brethren and sisters, a bct-saal 
or prayer-house — for Beissel was too thorough a sep- 
aratist to speak of a church — and many other houses, 
all baptized with quaint Old Testament names : Zion, 
Sharon, Kedar, Peniel, Bethany. The community itself 
took, about 1736, the name of Ephrata, in allusion to 

lOI 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

Ruth 4 : 1 1 ;* before this it had been simply known as 
" the Camp ; " probably it was the last clause of the verse 
which was taken, for the passage as a whole is gro- 
tesquely inappropriate to a celibate community. 

The soil was thin, the community about them one 
of poor and struggling frontiersmen. " Canestogues," 
wrote Miller, " was then a great wilderness and began 
to be settled by poor Germans, who desired our assist- 
ance in building houses for them ; which not only kept 
us employed several summers in hard carpenter's work, 
but also increased our poverty so much that we wanted 
even things necessary for life." This poverty it was, as 
much as any religious ideas, which dictated the employ- 
ment of wood at Ephrata to so many purposes for which 
metal is commonly used. The buildings are put to- 
gether with wooden pins, the doors hung on w'ooden 
hinges ; the community ate from wooden platters and 
cups, and even slept, their heads supported on blocks of 
wood instead of pillows. The brethren in the early times 
of the community drew the plough themselves, having 
no draught animals. They wore a habit of w'hite, with 
a hood, somewhat like the dress of the Capuchins, and 
their feet were shod with wooden sandals. 

Afterwards the community became prosperous, and 
this was mainly owing to the business abilit}' and energy 
of Israel Eckerlin, one of four brothers, all of whom 
entered the convent, fascinated by Beissel's charm and 
urged also by old Conrad Matthai, the Swiss survivor of 

* " And all the people that were in the gate, and the elders, said. We are 
witnesses. The Lord make the woman that is come into thine house like 
Rachel and like Leah, which two did build the house of Israel : and do 
thou worthily in Ephratah, and be famous in Beth-lehem." 

1 02 



The Dunkers and Ephrata 

the Hermits of the Wissahickon. But EckerHn's gifts, 
though for a time they benefited the community and 
inured to the glory of Beissel, were too great to be tol- 
erated by that jealous leader. At one time Brother 
Onesimus, as Eckerlin was called in religion, — for Beissel 
followed the Catholic custom of giving his disciples new 
names, — had supplanted Beissel as head of the com- 
munity ; but the brethren, and still more the sisters, re- 
fused obedience, and the Eckerlins finally left the com- 
munity and set out alone for the western wilds to become 
hermits there. On their departure the brethren in a 
childish revenge burnt Eckerlin's manuscripts, cut down 
an orchard of his planting, and sold a bell which he had 
recently ordered from Europe with his name, as head of 
the community, cast upon it ; the bell, after varied ser- 
vice in a church in Lancaster and in a fire department, 
finally came back to its original churchly use, which it 
still fulfils. The Eckerlins went to the remote forests 
of Virginia on the "New River," which we now call 
the Great Kanawha. There, protected by friendly In- 
dians, — for all German pioneers seem to have had orig- 
inally the kindliest relations with the red men, — Brother 
Onesimus and his brothers after the flesh lived a studi- 
ous, peaceful life, until a band of fierce Iroquois burst 
upon them and dragged them captive to Montreal ; 
thence they were sent to France, but they sank under 
their hardships, and died of fever shortly after reaching 
the Old World. 

This was in 1757, ten years before Beissel's own death, 
and while the convent from which the Eckerlins had 
been thrust out to their savage doom was in its greatest 
prosperity. There were practised all the monastic arts : 

103 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

illumination of manuscripts, the mysteriously beautiful 
choral singing which moved the most worldly hearers, 
and the publication from the press of Ephrata in the 
woods of Lancaster County of some of the finest as 
well as earliest specimens of colonial bookmaking. The 
community was known and spoken about in Europe ; 
Voltaire noted it, the Abbe Raynal and the Duke of La 
Roche-Jacquelin visited and wrote of it. 

In his later years Beissel took to drinking, although 
the chronicle of Ephrata — for, like mediaeval monasteries, 
they had their chronicle — does not admit this, noting 
only that the superintendent appeared "in the likeness 
of one who is drunk," " He became a master in this imi- 
tation," says Seidensticker, "and on one such occasion 
fell down the cellar stairs." Sometimes these edifying 
pranks inspired Beissel to the composition of hymns, 
which do not greatly differ in their unintelligibility 
from those composed when he was presumably in his 
right mind. 

Though Conrad Beissel was a domineering, self-right- 
eous fanatic, we have no evidence that he was immoral 
or other than self-deceived ; the adulation and reverence 
which he received from the brethren and sisters would 
have turned a head stronger than that of the mystical 
baker of Heidelberg and hermit of Ephrata. Beissel 
lived and ruled until 1768. He lies amid the weather- 
beaten remains of his cloister under a stone which tells 
the infrequent visitor that " Here rests an offspring of 
the Love of God, Friedsam, a solitary but later become 
a leader, guardian, and teacher of the solitary and of 
the congregation of Christ in and about Ephrata." 



104 



CHAPTER XI 

THE SCHWENKFELDER AND CHRISTOPHER DOCK 

In 1733 there came to Pennsylvania two families who 
were the avant-couriers of a small sect whose pathetic 
history of persecution and endurance makes them inter- 
esting out of all proportion to their numbers or the in- 
fluence they have had upon the history or development 
of the province. These were the Schwenkfelder, the fol- 
lowers of that Silesian nobleman of Reformation time, 
Caspar Schwenkfeld. 

Born in 1490, a courtier, a counsellor of his sovereign, 
a theologian, and withal a man of the sweetest and 
gentlest spirit, he left the Romish church under the im- 
pulse of Luther's deeds and words, but his own line of 
thought soon diverged from that of the Saxon reformer. 
His peculiar views were not so startlingly heretical as we 
might suppose from the violent objurgations — such as 
" bond-slave of the devil" — which Luther hurled at him. 
Schwenkfeld, a student of Hus, of Wickliffe, and of 
Tauler, taught a doctrine of the Word which made it 
almost identical with the Inner Light of the later 
Quakers, who, mdeed, are considered by some of their 
highest authorities to have derived much of their teach- 
ing from Schwenkfeld through the Dutch Mennonites. 
The Silesian reformer also denied consubstantiation, and 
held some peculiar belief as to the constitution of the 
glorified body of Christ. As to matters of church forms 
and government, Schwenkfeld said that "they had not 

105 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

been opened to him," and left his followers to do as they 
were led by that " Word of God" in whose guidance 
and enlightenment he trusted with so sublime and child- 
like a confidence. After a life of unremitting labor, of 
persecution, journeyings, exile, and unfailing charity 
towards all, Caspar Schwenkfeld died in Ulm, at the 
house of a faithful woman friend, and was buried in a 
cellar. 

He had always disclaimed any purpose to found a 
church, but his doctrine had many followers ; indeed, at 
the time of his death almost the whole population of 
some districts in his nativ^e province of Silesia were in 
sympathy with this pure and gentle reformer. In that 
period of ferocious orthodoxy which followed the Ref- 
ormation and preceded the Thirty Years' War, those 
inclined to Schwenkfeld' s opinions were often severely 
persecuted, but during the agonies of the long conflict 
Protestants had no leisure from suffering in which to 
persecute one another. The little groups of believers 
who were known, in spite of their leader's protest, as 
Schwenkfelder diminished in numbers, partly because 
the mildness of the dominant Lutheran Church drew 
many into her fold. 

In 171 8, that determined zealot Carl VI. being upon 
the imperial throne, it was decided to convert the Silesian 
heretics to Catholicism, and two Jesuit fathers were sent 
to Liegnitz, " in which principality most of the Schwenk- 
felders reside," charged with this special mission. For 
seven years the Jesuits tried every means, fair and foul, 
to convert this handful of simple peasants, but in vain. 
They were fined, the homestead of one man confiscated 
for a Catholic chapel and school, they were imprisoned ; 

106 



The Schwenkfelder, and Christopher Dock 

four girls were set in the stocks in the depths of winter 
and kept there in a kneeHng posture four days and nights 
until the urgent appeals of their friends procured their 
Hberation, though they lay for weeks at the point of 
death from the effects of the racking strain. The Jesuits 
refused to perform marriages, and most lamented of all 
their measures was the refusal to allow the heretics to 
bury their dead with funeral ceremonies in the church- 
yards. They must be taken on a wheelbarrow or cart 
to "the cow-paths," and there interred without hymn or 
prayer. There still remain more than two hundred of 
these graves in "the cow-paths," and the simple rhyme 
in which these persecuted people recorded their suffer- 
ings recited this as the greatest of their afflictions ; 
translated, it runs: "Throw their dead out like foul 
carrion ; the cow-path is too good ; trample not on the 
grass ; the father may not go with his child ; the wife 
not accompany the husband to his long home." Orphan 
children were put in charge of the Jesuits to be brought 
up in the Catholic faith. The Schwenkfelder were for- 
bidden to sell their property or to leave the country. 

The poor heretics sent two of their number to Vienna 
to beg clemency of the Kaiser, but in vain. Four years 
the humble ambassadors remained at the court, pleading 
for some mitigation of their trials, but in 1725 the Kaiser 
"once for all refused" any toleration to the heretics. 
The jails were now "never empty of Schwenkfelder," 
and the fines amounted to an enormous sum. Then the 
patience of the misbelievers broke down, and the only 
deed of violence in their existence of two hundred years 
took place when they broke into the dwelling of one of 
the Jesuit Fathers, beat him, and then fled by night, 

107 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

leaving their little earthly all behind them, to Gorlitz 
and to Count Zinzendorf at Berthelsdorf. Here they 
were afforded shelter for a time, but the danger of pro- 
tecting those outlawed Christians was so great that Zin- 
zendorf himself advised their seeking an asylum else- 
where. 

But where in Europe could such an asylum be found ? 
They knew too well that there was no continuing city 
for them in the Old World, so, in spite of the endeavors 
of friends in Holland to dissuade them from emigration 
by painting the gloomiest pictures of Pennsylvania, the 
Schwenkfelder resolved to go thither, and, helped by 
generous merchants of Haarlem, the three brothers von 
Bynschance, they set sail in 1733 for America. 

They landed safely in Philadelphia, and immediately 
appointed a day of thanksgiving — " Gedachtniss Tag" — 
which is still observed by the little congregation on 
the 6th of September every year. For several years 
after the arrival of the first members of the sect each 
summer brought a new accession to their number, until 
all the Schwenkfelder of Silesia had found refuge from 
their centuries of persecution in the province of Penn- 
sylvania. 

A few years after their flight, Frederick the .Great, 
having in the mean time conquered the province of 
Silesia, and heard of the industry, honesty, and blame- 
less life of these Silesian Quakers, wrote requesting 
them to return, assuring them of full religious toleration, 
for "In my dominions," wrote the King once, "every- 
body can go to heaven after their own fashion provided 
they pay their taxes." But the Schwenkfelder, having 
escaped from Europe, did not wish to return, and wrote 

loS 



The Schwenkfelder, and Christopher Dock 

the great King a simple description of their peace and 
prosperity in Pennsylvania, declining his invitation. 

Yet they long retained a grateful interest in the few 
friends of their days of adversity. More than half a 
century after the merchant brothers von Bynschance 
had furnished help for their destitute fellow-Christians 
to flee from Europe, their firm met with reverses ; the 
Schwenkfelder in Pennsylvania, hearing of it, made up a 
subscription for its aid " in grateful remembrance of the 
kindness shown their fathers." After the Napoleonic 
plunderings of Germany in 1816, they sent money to 
the town council of Gorlitz, the city which had sheltered 
some of the sect when harried out of their Liegnitz 
homes, and which was now suffering the desolation of 
war. 

The history of the Schwenkfelder in Pennsylvania, 
where alone the sect is found, is uneventful. They had 
the usual fortunes and hardships of pioneers. Most of 
them settled along the Perkiomen in Montgomery 
County. Here they have followed their simple customs 
of worship, resembling those of the Quakers, with the ex- 
ception that they use singing, and, although opposed to 
infant baptism, bring their young children to the meet- 
ing-house to dedicate them to God in prayer. For a 
generation after their arrival they were without any 
church organization, but at the end of the Revolutionary 
War, their minister, Christopher Schultz, a shepherd lad 
at the time of the flight from Silesia, who had been 
taught by their old weaver-preacher Weiss, organized 
them into several districts, collected their records, ar- 
ranged a catechism and hymn-book and their " Com- 
pendium" or confession of faith. He also regulated the 

109 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

school and poor funds, for to both education and charity 
the Schwenkfelder have ever given great attention. 
There are but a few hundred members of the sect now, 
though descendants of the early exiles for rehgion's sake 
are numerous and respectable ; the soldier of the Civil 
War and Governor of Pennsylvania, whose monu- 
ment now adorns our State Capitol, John F. Hartranft, 
was sixth in descent from that "Tobias Hertteranfft" 
who fled across the seas with the little pilgrim band 
more than one hundred and fifty years ago. 

The zeal of those impoverished and persecuted exiles, 
the Schwenkfelder, for education, is only the manifesta- 
tion of a characteristic common to all the German 
emigrants of colonial times. To secure a school-master 
and a minister to accompany a colony was recognized 
by the land speculators and colonizers of those days as 
almost indispensable in order to attract emigrants ; and 
very unsuitable men were sometimes foisted upon the 
poor Germans to represent these professions. 

The common opinion among the Englishmen who have 
written our colonial history is that the Germans were 
"dull and ignorant boors." This perhaps arose as 
much from ignorance on the part of the English his- 
torian as on that of the maligned Germans, — ignorance 
alike of the language, the thought, and the culture of 
Germany. The early immigrants, also, belonging to 
obscure and persecuted sects, were naturally anxious to 
have the tenets of these sects taught their children in 
the language of the fathers, and so they opposed English 
and "godless" schools on the ground of the Catholic 
opposition at the present time. But their own school- 
masters were often men of "light and leading" among 

no 



The Schwenkfelder, and Christopher Dock 

their people ; such a man as Pastorius, a scholar, a 
university man, and a born leader, was of course rare — 
such men are never common ; but a type such as Ulmer 
of Waldoboro, or Schley of Frederick — cheerful, cour- 
ageous, resourceful, and pious — was fortunately very 
often found in these log school-houses of the wilderness. 

Such a man blessed and taught the German children 
of Montgomery County in the person of Christopher 
Dock, the pious school-master of Skippack. Dock 
did not lead his people to the triumphant taking of 
a fortress like Captain Ulmer, nor did he settle prosper- 
ous colonies in the wilderness like Schley, but the 
monument of this devout Pennsylvanian precursor of 
Froebel is in the affection and reverence of all who 
knew him. The incidents of his life are few — indeed it 
may be said to have none. A Mennonite drafted into 
the army and discharged because of his scruples against 
warfare, he came to Pennsylvania about 17 14, taught 
school for ten years, then gave it up and went to farm- 
ing. But his conscience was uneasy ; he felt that 
teaching was for him a divine vocation, and in 1738 he 
again resumed it. For more than thirty years he taught 
the fortunate children of Skippack and Salford, three 
days alternately. Then one autumn evening "he did 
not return from his labors at the usual time, A search 
was made, and he was found in the school-house on his 
knees — dead. After the dismissal of the scholars he 
had remained to pray, and the messenger of death had 
overtaken him at his devotions, — a fitting end to a life 
like his." 

Many of his friends had long been desirous to have a 
description of Dock's method of keeping school, but, 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

owing to the school-master's modesty and to his Men- 
nonite principles which forbade him to do anything 
tending to his own praise, it was difficult to win Dock 
to write it. The precious manuscript was mislaid while 
in the hands of the printer Saur, upon which the author 
joyfully remarked that "it had never been his opinion 
that it ought to be printed in his lifetime and so he 
was very well pleased that it had been lost." But it 
was found, printed, and so a picture of the ideal school 
and home life of the Pennsylvania Germans in the 
second and third generations after the founding of 
Germantown is placed before us. 

A modern writer has said that it is evident that Dock's 
scholars were " the children of a very rough peasantry 
who had to be prevented from living like animals," — 
which is about as well founded as most of this author's 
easy generalizations from insufficient knowledge. The 
rules of etiquette which George Washington copied 
from an English work for his own guidance in Virginian 
society, about the same time, show that our ancestors 
were none of them particularly refined. 

Dock's book pictures for us the little Germans " rising 
without being called, dressing themselves quickly but 
neatly," and after the morning prayer and a greeting to 
'* those who first meet you," going to school at the right 
time. " If any known or respectable person meets you, 
make way for him, bow courteously. Dear child, when 
you come into school incline reverently, sit down quietly 
in your place, and think of the presence of God. Al- 
though after school you are out of sight of your teacher, 
God is present in all places ; be circumspect before Him 
and His holy Angels." " In church sing and pray very 



Tlie Schwenkfelder, and Christopher Dock 

devoutly, since out of the mouth of young children will 
God be praised. . . . When the name of Jesus is men- 
tioned, uncover or incline your head. Be never idle, 
never listen at the door. Make your reverence deeply 
and lowly with raised face. Never go about nasty and 
dirty. If anything is presented to you take it with the 
right hand and give thanks courteously. Do not laugh 
at everything and especially at the evils and misfortunes 
of others. If you have promised anything try to hold 
to it." So the gentle school-master instructs the little 
boys and girls, and tells us, too, how he "treats the 
children with love," and endeavors to train them so that 
" the honor of God may be increased and the common 
good be furthered." Perhaps Penn's ideal of the Chris- 
tian commonwealth in the wilderness was never better 
expressed than thus by the pious German school-master. 



"3 



CHAPTER XII 

THE PROGRESS OF SETTLEMENT IN THE VALLEY OF 
VIRGINIA AND IN MARYLAND 

So much of the province of the Penns as had then 
been purchased from the Indians — and the proprietors 
were very careful to extinguish the Indian title before 
selling the land to white men — lay in the form of 
a quarter-circle around the city of Philadelphia. It 
stretched westward to and across the Susquehanna, and 
northward vaguely to " the mountains." The Germans 
had now spread around the outer rim of this segment 
of a circle. Near the city, with the exception of the 
Germantown settlers, the colonists were of British blood ; 
Chester, Delaware, and Bucks Counties were English. 
But outside of this, on the frontiers where land was 
cheap, the Germans settled, toiled, endured hardships, 
lived their lives after the economical and religious pat- 
tern showed in the Fatherland, and prospered. 

Montgomery County was first entered in 1702 ; an 
interval of a few years, and the Oley Huguenots of 
3erks and the Pequae Mennonites of Lancaster County 
formed rallying points for further settlement. We have 
seen how Miller, the Prior of Ephrata, found " poor Ger- 
mans" on " Conestogues" in need of the brethren's help. 
In two or three years came the fugitives from Schoharie 
and Tulpehocken, the pioneers of the western part of 
Berks. Then in Quitapahilla, the "Snakes' Hole," was 
begun the populating of Lebanon and Dauphin Coun- 

114 



Settlement in Virginia and in Maryland 

ties. A curious episode in the history of Lebanon was 
the coming of a Jewish colony, which settled in the vicinity 
of Schaefferstown in the second or third decade of the 
century, had a synagogue and a rabbi, and a graveyard 
about which they built a stone wall so substantial that 
it long survived the colony, now for many years but a 
fading memory. Crossing the Susquehanna, probably 
at " Wright's Ferry," German pioneers pushed on into 
the territory of the present York and Adams Counties, 
and about 1730 formed there the earliest nucleus of white 
occupation, the " Conewago settlements." 

The tide of German pioneers flowed yet farther south 
and crossed the Pennsylvania border. In 1732 Jost 
Heit with his family, his sons-in-law, Chrisman and 
Bowman, their families, and a number of others, sixteen 
households in all, started from Pennsylvania for the fer- 
tile regions of the South. From York they cut their 
road through the forests, forded the Potomac, which they 
called the Cohongoronton, near Harper's Ferry, and en- 
tered the rich and beautiful Valley of Virginia. Heit 
settled near Winchester, some of his company near the 
present Stephens City, the others took up their abodes 
at distances of a few miles from each other down " the 
Valley." In about thirty years the towns of Strasburg, 
Woodstock, and Shepherdstown (first called Mecklen- 
burg) were established, all of them by Germans ; but, of 
course, the settlements on these sites began much earlier. 
Peter Stover was the founder of Strasburg ; Shepherd, a 
Pennsylvania German, whose real name was Shaeffer, 
settled his town with a number of German mechanics ; 
of Woodstock, where we shall see Peter Muhlenberg ex- 
changing the gown for the soldier's uniform, it is said by 

"5 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

Kercheval in 1833 that " it was settled exclusively by- 
Germans, and their religion, manners, customs, habits, 
and language were for a long time preserved, and to this 
day the German language is generally in use by the in- 
habitants." And this, we know, was a full century after 
Jost Heit's caravan crossed the " Cohongoronton" on its 
way to settle the valley. Doddridge, who, of course, 
was not of this people, says, in his valuable "Notes" on 
the frontier life of Virginia and Pennsylvania, of these 
pioneers and their descendants, " It is remarkable that 
throughout the whole extent of the United States the 
Germans in proportion to their wealth have the best 
churches, organs, and graveyards." 

A few years passed, and Jost Heit's trail was followed 
as far as Maryland and the Monocacy by other Penn- 
sylvania Germans, who settled in the neighborhood of 
what is now the town of Frederick. The passage of 
Heit's colony, like one of the treks which founded the 
Dutch republics in South Africa, had called the atten- 
tion of the Maryland governor to the valuable material 
for settlement which was passing over his country ; he 
offered land to other Germans upon favorable conditions, 
and presently there arose a little settlement, commonly 
known, as was the custom of the time, after the stream 
which drained the country, as Monocacy. In 1735 an 
organized colony came to re-enforce the few scattered 
pioneers. It was led by a Palatine school-master, John 
Thomas Schley, who was the mainstay of school and 
community and church for half a century. Schlatter, 
the pioneer apostle of the Reformed Church in this 
country, wrote, twelve years after, " It is a great advantage 
to this congregation that they have the best school-master 

116 



Settlement in Virginia and in Maryland 

that I have met with in America. He spares neither 
labor nor pains in instructing the young and edifying 
the congregation according to his ability by means of 
singing and reading the Word of God and printed ser- 
mons on every Lord's Day." This excellent school- 
master, the next year, built the first house in the town 
of Frederick, which was laid out in 1745. The sur- 
veyor, we are told, intended to lay out its streets 
towards the cardinal points, but owing to his defective 
instruments he was not very successful. From John 
Thomas Schley are descended a long line of men useful 
in their day and generation as he was in his ; the most 
famous being Admiral Winfield Scott Schley, the de- 
stroyer of Spain's last fleet in that New World which 
she discovered. 

The Palatine school-master also lived in stirring times, 
though the incidents of his day were but the border 
warfare between the two provinces of Maryland and 
Pennsylvania. In the same year that Schley and his 
fellow-Palatines came to " Monocacy," the Governor of 
Maryland appealed to the King to relate how he had 
" thought the people so deserving Encouragement that 
several Considerable Quantities of Land were allotted 
them for their Residence and accordingly not less than 
fifty or sixty families of that nation immediately took 
possession of these Lands." Presently " through un wari- 
ness and too much Credulity they suffered themselves to 
be prevailed on by the Emissaries of Pennsylvania to 
renounce openly their Submission to this Government." 
These Palatines then proceeded, " being people of more 
than ordinary Spirit, to the Commission of horrid and 
Cruel Violence," — that is, they retaliated some attacks 

117 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

by the borderer, Thomas Cresap, by burning Cresap's 
house. Much wordy and stately correspondence be- 
tween the two governors followed, the Pennsylvania 
government "made some observations on the style and 
manners of the Lord Baltimore's letters which they con- 
ceived too peremptory ;" the King was appealed to, and 
finally a line was run between the two provinces, as far 
as the Susquehanna, where it was stopped for a matter of 
thirty years, until the famous " Mason and Dixon's Line" 
was at last completed. The hostilities between Cresap, 
who was a typical frontiersman, and " these deluded 
people," the Palatines, seem to have ceased spontane- 
ously without need of any further rhetoric, and the Ger- 
mans continued the quiet settling up of the province. 

In 1739 Jonathan Hagar came to reside on his tract, 
called " Hagar's Choice," about thirty miles west of the 
Monocacy settlement. In 1769 he had his town laid 
out, and attempted to give it the name of his belov^ed 
wife, Elizabeth, but to the public Jonathan Hagar was 
better known than his wife, and so the place was called 
Hagar's Town " in honour of its intelligent founder." By 
this time the Germans had spread over the whole region 
west of the South Mountain and as far as Conococheague 
Creek. Elizabeth (Hager's)Town was taking its present 
name ; the Moravians had begun a church settlement 
at Graceham ; and the subsequent Taneytown, Mechan- 
icstown, Emmitsburg, and many other villages were 
being settled. 

Frederick Count}' — liberally including the western 
part of the province " as far as the settlements extend" — 
was formed in the middle of the centur)\ All through 
the country Gerijians had settled on their " tracts," which 

118 



Settlement in Virginia and in Maryland 

often rejoiced in the oddest and quaintest of names : 
"The Bachelor's dcHght," "Father's Good Will," 
"Found it out," "Ilager's Defence," " Kyser's Inheri- 
tance," "Magdalen's Fancy," " Manhim," "New Bre- 
men," "Small Bit," "Struggle," " New Work," "Jacob's 
Loss," "Adam's Fall," "Small Venture," or " There- 
abouts," "Bower's Struggle," "I have waited long 
enough." 

It was a frontier community, who for the most part 
lived like the peasants they had been and the backwoods- 
men that they were. The women in petticoat and short 
gown cooked plentifully, kept the rude log cabins cleaner 
than those of their few Irish neighbors, worked in the 
fields in summer and spun diligently in winter ; the men, 
clad in the half-Indian costume of fringed hunting-shirt 
and leggings, cleared and farmed their little tracts, and 
had rich gain in skins, furs, and game that fell to their 
unerring rifles. 

The thrifty Palatines early established a trade with the 
German settlements south of them, and caravans of pack- 
horses carried through the Valley of Virginia as far as 
Georgia their manufactures of wool, flax, and leather. 
It was along this southern trail, first blazed by the Ger- 
man pioneers of the Shenandoah Valley, that most of the 
emigration to Maryland, Virginia, and the farther South 
passed. About the middle of the century we have the 
record of a small number of Germans who landed at 
Annapolis, and came to Frederick County from there. 
The first Lutheran minister of the town came with this 
colony, and there is a letter from Caecilius Calvert, Lord 
Baltimore, which vaguely recommends the authorities 
" to forward them to Manockesy (which I understand is 

119 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

in Frederick County)." The arrivals of ministers, the 
foundation of churches and building of houses of wor- 
ship, represent the intellectual as well as the spiritual side 
of pioneer life, and, judged by this standard, the Palatines 
of the Maryland wilderness were neither backward nor 
neglectful of these higher things. 

But while they were clearing the forests, building log 
churches, laying out towns, and sending tinkling trains 
of pack-horses through the southern wilderness, Ger- 
man settlement in the South, in Georgia and "the Caro- 
linas, " had begun there almost contemporaneously with 
that of Western Maryland and the Shenandoah Valley, 
and was increasing and multiplying from centres of its 
own foundation. 



I20 



CHAPTER XIII 

THE GERMANS IN SOUTH CAROLINA 

The first German settlement of the Southern States 
was the unlucky colony of Purysburg, in what was subse- 
quently South Carolina. A certain Jean Pierre Purry, 
of Neufchatel in Switzerland, conceived the design of 
planting a colony in the Carolinas. It was with him a 
matter of business and hoped-for profit ; no religious or 
humanitarian ideas entered into it. Purry had been a 
director in Law's " Compagnie des Indes," and seems to 
have inherited to the full the visionary and magnificent 
spirit of that blower of bubbles. After his superior's 
fall Purry visited South Carolina, was enamoured of the 
climate and land, and published a curious pamphlet set- 
ting forth the advantages of countries under the influ- 
ences of the sun at the precise angle of the thirty-third 
degree of latitude. This favored situation Carolina 
occupied, and he, therefore, desired to lead a colony 
thither. 

The proposition apparently fell flat; but in 1731 the 
indefatigable "Mr. Peter Purry" sent out another pam- 
phlet informing the public that he had secured a grant 
of land " on the borders of the river Savanna proper to 
build the town of Purrysburg upon." He paints the 
prospects of the colony in most alluring colors : " A man 
who shall have a little land in Carolina and who is not 
willing to work above two or three hours a day, may very 

. 121 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

easily live tliere. If you travel into tlie countn-. you 
will see stately Buildings, noble Castles, and an infinite 
number of all sorts of Cattle. . . . Tlie people of the 
Palatinate, tliose of New York, New England, and otlier 
parts sell all tliat they have to come to Carolina." The 
reader wonders tliat any one resisted tlie attractions of 
this eartliK- paradise, but tlie cold fact is that Purr\- ^\•as 
only able to collect one hundred and sevent>* Switzers 
who sailed witli him tlie next year for diis "excellent 
countr}-." 

Arri\-ing tliere. tlie governor gave tliem fort}- tliousand 
acres of land about tliirt}- miles from tlie mouth of tlie 
Savannah River, and also pro\isions for their main- 
tenance until tliey should be able to support themselves. 

But tlie colony, in spite of a re-enforcement of two 
hundred souls, would not prosper. Sickness, tlie hard- 
ships of life in a new land, and discontent were among 
them. They had brought their own minister, one M. 
Bignion. who had received Episcopal ordination at the 
hands of tlie Bishop of London when the colonists tar- 
ried there on tlieir way ; but in a few years he departed 
for the settlements on the Santee. When, about the 
same date, the period arrived to discontinue tlie allow- 
ance for tlie support of the colonists, tlie poor Swiss 
were not able to take care of themselves as tliey had 
expected. True, we hear how in 1736 a deputation 
from Purysburg, a patrician o( Benie and otlier gende- 
nien, waited upon Governor Oglethorpe of Georgia with 
polite speeches, and how when Oglethorpe repaid the 
visit " he was lodged and handsomely entertained at tlie 
house of Colonel Purr}- ;'" but the majorit}- of tlie colo- 
nists were in no such circumstances as tlieir leader. 

122 



The Germans in Soiirli Carolina 

Two )-cars after this the founder died, and tlie prosperity 
ol' the colony seems to ha\-e died with him. It main- 
tained a struggling and dwindhng existence until the 
Revolution. 

The coast countr)- of South Carolina was by this time 
ascertained to be — save in exceptional places — malari- 
ous, and impossible for the continued residence of white 
men. The plantations were deserted for the " upper 
countn-" in the dangerous summer, and tlie gay little 
city of " Charles-Towne" in winter. The tide of German 
emigration set towards tlie high lands in tlie centre of the 
province ; in a few years a score of colonies had been 
settled there, and "by 1775 they had spread themselves 
over the entire western portion of tlie colon)-." 

Undeterred b\- the misfortunes of the Pun'sburg 
colony, perhaps encouraged b\' the hard-won success of 
the pious Salzburgers at Ebenezer, many persons were 
anxious to " undertake the transport oi' Palatines" to 
Carolina. Among the state papers are letters setting 
forth that the writers " hear upon good autliorit\- that 
the agents for the Penn family have quarrelled ^\ ith the 
Palatines and have refused to let them ha\e an\- more 
land in Pennsylvania. This will put a stop to an\- more 
going to that colonv. Next vear a number of the bet- 
ter sort o( the inhabitants must be forced to quit the 
Palatinate on account of their religion. If proper en- 
couragement were given to a few flimilies to go and 
settle in South Carolina so that the}' might acquaint 
their country-men with the goodness of that pro\-ince, 
South Carolina might ver\- soon be peopled with honest 
planters." Then we have an enthusiastic account of 
" some Palatines who were sent by their countrxnien to 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

South Carolina. They very much approve of the coun- 
try and have made an advantageous report." 

These personal reports seem to have been the chief 
cause of the emigration of Germans to the South. Few 
large bodies of emigrants seem to have come ; but in 
1735 an emigration en masse took place to the settle- 
ment afterwards named Orangeburg, " because the first 
colonists were subjects of the Prince of Orange." 
Subsequently this name was given to the whole 
" District," which is the first of the counties on the 
range back from the ocean to be colonized. Two years 
after the first comers, a third re-enforcement arrived, 
bringing with them, in the German fashion, their pastor, 
the Rev. John Ulrich Giessendanncr. Shortly after his 
arrival he was married to the person who had been his 
housekeeper for more than a quarter of a century ; both 
were well stricken in years, and shortly afterwards this 
first German pastor of South Carolina died. 

He was succeeded by his nephew, who bore the same 
name, but probably to avoid confusion soon dropped his 
middle name and was known as the Rev. John Giessen- 
danncr ; he, like his uncle, was a Swiss, and labored for 
many years among the pioneer Germans with general 
acceptation, as was shown in the disturbance which was 
shortly after brought into the little settlement by a cer- 
tain itinerant minister who rejoiced in the name of the 
Rev. Bartholomew Zauberbiihler. This worthy was not 
only a minister but a colonizer, a land speculator, and 
not impossibly one of those hated agents in collecting 
"Palatines" for the New World whom the Germans 
branded with the name of Neulander. It seems that 
the settlers of Orangeburg had degenerated somewhat 

124 



The Germans in South Carohna 7 

in the roughness of pioneer Hfe, and when their young 
and energetic pastor attempted to bring about a reforma- 
tion, there was some disaffection among them. Zau- 
berbiihler heard of this : he was at the time occupied — 
and one would think sufficiently so — in settHng the 
colony of New Windsor on the Savannah River opposite 
Augusta. But he found time to intrude into the 
Orangeburg parish, and in 1742 appeared before the 
provincial council with a petition reciting that " there 
were a great many Germans at Orangeburg, Santee, and 
thereabouts who are very desirous of hearing the Word 
of God preached to them and their children," and also 
very desirous that Zauberbiihler should be the preacher. 
He asked the council to grant him five hundred pounds 
money to go to London to be ordained to the position 
of minister in the established church at Orangeburg on 
his return ; in recompense he proposed "to bring over a 
number of foreign Protestants to settle in this province." 
But before the Rev. Bartholomew could take his de- 
parture for England on this very mixed ecclesiastical 
and colonizing mission, the Orangeburg settlers sent a 
most indignant petition to the council " to permit the 
said Mr. John Giessendanner still to officiate for them 
in divine service free from any further disturbance or 
molestation." Upon this, Zauberbiihler subsided and 
we hear nothing more of him. 

But a few years after Giessendanner took the step 
threatened by his rival, and went to London for Epis- 
copal ordination. The Anglican was the established 
church in the colony ; the Society for the Propagation 
of the Gospel, though originally a non-denominational 
missionary society, now threw its influence on the same 



( The Germans in Colonial Times 

side in appointing its clergyman for work in the prov- 
ince, and many of the early Lutheran congregations 
were thus transferred to the Episcopal fold. 

Meantime, settlement advanced. Governor Glen wrote 
to the home government in 1745 of "Orangeburg, 
Amelia, Sax Gotha, and Fredericksburg, towns chiefly 
settled with German Protestants." Amelia Township 
is northeast of Orangeburg; "Sax Gotha" is the gov- 
ernor's mistake for Saxe-Gotha,* the original name of 
the district or county subsequently called Lexington ; it 
formed the northwest corner of Orangeburg district. It 
was settled in 1737, two years after the elder colony; 
in 1741 Bolzius of Ebenezer wrote, "We had heard 
nothing before of Saxe-Gotha in America, but we have 
just heard the intelligence that such a town (township) 
is laid out in South Carolina, one hundred English 
miles from Charlestown on the road that passes through 
Orangeburg, and settled with German people. They 
have a Reformed minister among them with whose 
character we are not }'et acquainted." This clergyman 
was the Rev. Christian Theus, a painstaking and godly 
man, who labored for fifty years in this pioneer com- 
munity, and now rests under a tombstone whose half- 
effaced inscription says, "This faithful divine labored 
through a long life as a faithful servant in his Master's 
vineyard, and the reward which he received from many 
for his labor was ingratitude." 

Very probably this melancholy tribute alludes to the 
opposition and personal danger in which Pastor Theus 

* Mills, speaking of Saxe-Gotha, says quaintly, "The inhabitants are 
mostly of Genuan extraction and a good deal of equality is kept up among 
tliem. ' ' 

126 



The Germans in South CaroHna j 

then stood from what is known as the Weber heresy. 
This wild sect, reminding us of some of the fanatical 
developments of Russian sectarianism at the present 
time, was founded by a certain Peter Weber, who 
announced to his believing followers that he was God ; 
another of the sect claimed to be the second person of 
the Trinity, and the principal doctrine of the sect seems 
to have been the scourging of members at the hands of 
these frantic fanatics, that they might " be healed by 
stripes." Finally the leader selected one of his people 
as the incarnation of Satan, who was commanded to be 
destroyed, which was carried out so literally that the 
man was killed ; for this murder Weber was hanged, 
and the sect perished with its poor deluded founder. 

This half-insane tragedy would give a very false im- 
pression of the early German settlers of South Carolina 
in general, if we took it as representative of the pioneers, 
who, patient, industrious, brave, and God-fearing, were 
all these years filling up the central and western part 
of the State. 

The fertile fields of the well-named counties of 
Richland and Fairfield were first tilled by them, over- 
flows probably from the Saxe-Gotha settlements, as was 
the case in the Newberry district. We have seen that 
speculative minister of the Word, Zauberbiihler, found- 
ing the settlement of New Windsor ; this later received 
large accessions through the efforts of an assister of 
emigration, Hans Riemensperger, who also was instru- 
mental in bringing many persons, chiefly orphans, as 
redemptioners into the Saxe-Gotha settlements. The 
story of the Carolinian redemptioners has never been 
told, though we know from the scattered notices in the 

127 



\ The Germans in Colonial Times 

Urlsperger reports that this useful but misinterpreted 
kind of emigration made up a large part of the whole 
in the Southern as in the Northern States. 

About the middle of the eighteenth century there 
came to South Carolina one of the latest colonies from 
the Fatherland, a number of Germans, who " after some 
delay settled so near the Northern border of the province 
that part of their settlements are in North Carolina and 
part in the counties of Chesterfield and Lancaster in 
South Carolina." They brought with them, as was 
common, a minister, or rather a school-master, who 
served them in divine things, subsequently studied the- 
ology and was ordained, and finally led the greater por- 
tion of his people to "the Forks of Saluda and Broad" 
(Newberry County), where they seem to have re-enforced 
the previously mentioned settlement, and from this 
apparently it was sometimes called "Dutch Forks." 

The last Germans to settle in a body in the province 
of South Carolina was the much-tried colony of " Hard 
Labor Creek," a name probably bestowed by the pio- 
neers out of the fulness of their hearts. An officer of 
the victorious army of Frederick the Great, one Stiimpel, 
found himself after the conclusion of peace discharged 
and poor, like the hero of Lessing's immortal play 
"Minna von Barnhelm." But Stiimpel was very unlike 
the heroic and scrupulous Major von Tellheim. He set 
about retrieving his fallen fortunes by speculating in 
German colonists. He procured five or six hundred of 
them, a tract of land from the British government, and 
transported his " poor Palatines' ' to London with the 
intention — it is to be hoped — of taking them to America. 
For some reason he was unable to do this, whereupon 

128 



The Germans in South Carolina. 

the valiant officer decamped, leaving his helpless colonists 
penniless and starving in a strange land. Their pitiful 
case was brought to the notice of benevolent Englishmen. 
Food, money, medical attendance, and transportation were 
given them, and in the spring of 1764 two ship-loads 
of them arrived at Charleston and were presently sent 
up the country, "conducted by a detachment of the 
Rangers," through the forests and swamps to the very 
verge of white settlement on a tract very inappropriately 
named " Londonderry." The other name we have cited, 
as well as that of Cuffeytown, was also given to the place 
which was in the present county of Abbeville. Here 
the deserted and beggared Germans, who had so wonder- 
fully found friends in their distress, settled, increased, and 
multiplied, and at one time had a church of their own — 
"St. George on Hard Labor Creek" — where they heard 
the gospel in their own language ; but in the storms of 
the Revolution this passed from existence. 



129 



CHAPTER XIV 

GERMAN COLONIZATION IN NEW ENGLAND 

There were in New England two attempts at German 
colonization, one at Waldoboro in Maine and the other 
at Braintree in Massachusetts. Neither was very for- 
tunate in its outcome, and, as they were somewhat 
connected, their stories may be told together. The set- 
tlement of Germans in the present State of Maine, then 
the eastward frontier of the province of Massachusetts, 
began about 1739 ; in the next year two or three fami- 
lies added themselves to the colony, but the main body 
came in the autumn of 1742 ; and, indeed, so slight is 
the evidence for any earlier settlement that this may be 
taken as the true date for this beginning of German set- 
tlement in Maine. These emigrants had been procured 
for General Waldo, the owner of a large tract of wilder- 
ness "on the confines of New England," by Sebastian 
Zauberbiihler, the son of that minister, colonizer, land 
speculator, and sharp business man whom we have seen 
in South Carolina, colonizing Germans at New Wind- 
sor, and concurrently vexing the righteous soul of the 
pastor of Saxe-Gotha. 

Waldo himself was of German descent. His grand- 
father was an officer in the army of Gustavus Adolphus, 
and a branch of the voji Waldow family still exists 
among the Prussian nobility. The father of the provincial 
proprietor, however, dropped the von and the nobility to 
become a prosperous merchant in Boston ; his son was 

130 



German Colonization in New England 

born in London during a business residence of the 
father's in that city. He became a typical American, 
an energetic, resourceful, not too scrupulous merchant, 
a colonizer of vast plans and promises, a soldier when 
occasion arose, who could take from the King of France 
his great fortress of Louisburg with an army of provin- 
cial husbandmen and mechanics. This, however, was 
not the result of native and untutored military genius. 
He had served the Elector of Hanover for ten years in 
his army, rising to the rank of major, and when the 
elector became George I. of England, Waldo resigned, 
receiving the rank of captain in the colonial militia of 
Massachusetts. 

He made many journeys to Europe, and it was prob- 
ably on one of these that he began the project of colo- 
nizing the tract of land which he had acquired in Maine, 
with Germans. He appointed Zauberbiihler his agent 
for the collection of the emigrants. The specious Se- 
bastian established himself at the inn of the " Golden 
Lion" in Speyer, the old Palatinate city, and thence 
issued a circular glowingly describing the charms and 
fertility of the coast of Maine. Land was promised the 
colonists, the support of a minister, " chirurgeon," sur- 
veyor, and school-master for ten years, good food on the 
voyage, two large houses for their shelter during the first 
winter, and a church, while Waldo promised to support 
the colonists for a year after their arrival. 

With these enticements Zauberbiihler induced three 
hundred Pfalzer and Wurtemberger to accompany him 
to the promised land. They were chiefly Lutherans in re- 
ligion, and at that time a coalition between the Reformed 
and Catholic churches of the Palatinate made life bitter 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

for these poor Christians : they were assured of " the 
free exercise of all Protestant religions," and so they 
went, the Palatines gathering at Mannheim, the Wiirtem- 
berger at Heilbronn, for the tedious journey down the 
Rhine. At Cologne they were detained two months, no 
ship being ready for them. If they had been allowed to 
enter Holland, by the terms of the contract, Waldo's 
Rotterdam agents would have been obliged to subsist 
them. They were kept at the frontier until their money 
and patience were almost exhausted ; a number diverted 
their emigration to Pennsylvania, some returned home, 
many of the young men enlisted, and the remnant finally 
sailed for New England. 

At Boston they were welcomed by Governor Shirley 
and by Waldo, who accompanied his colonists to Broad 
Bay, but soon quitted them, leaving them without the 
promised shelter or church, without clothing, chimneys 
to their houses, mills to make flour, or ovens to bake 
bread ; the chief subsistence of these German pilgrims 
during the first winter on the stern and rock-bound coast 
of Maine was rye bruised between stones and made into 
broth. If there were any colonists of their own race 
who had preceded them, they were too poor to be of 
much assistance. 

Their minister left them during their first hardships, 
but his place was filled by John Ulmer, a school-master, 
who for years read service and sermons to them in barns, 
or whatever rude shelter could be found when the in- 
clemency of the weather made their customary service 
in the open air impossible. He "conferred" with the 
Indians when the mutterings of alarm came before the 
Spanish War ; he led the German soldiers in the siege 

132 



German Colonization in New England 

of Louisburg ; he was their magistrate, prince, priest, 
and military commander, and withal put a cheerful 
courage on and solaced himself with jokes now and 
then. Once at Pemaquid, " hailing the people in the 
dusk of the evening to set him across the river," he gave 
his name " with such a string of Dutch titles that they 
expected to find a large number of persons" and were 
surprised to discover only the German school-master of 
Broad Bay waiting at the ferry. 

The colonists presently sent a petition to the Massa- 
chusetts General Court begging the redress of their 
wrongs, but this worshipful body was evidently afraid to 
molest the wealthy merchant for his broken promises to 
"the Palatines." A committee finally reported that the 
Germans and Zauberbiihler were both at fault, and 
that " Mr. Waldo did conceed to fullfill his part of the 
contract which, notwithstanding he has not in all respects 
done, he has shown forth heretofore, and now declares 
is ready to do it whenever it will suit With their conven- 
ience." It is also suggested that as " said Palatines will 
be left in starving condition 'tis humbly proposed this 
Court grant a sum of money to be laid out in Provisions 
and Clothing to help 'em thro' the winter;" but neither 
this nor any other help for which they asked was ever 
given them. 

When the siege of Louisburg was resolved upon, the 
Germans, as we have seen, went to war under the lead- 
ership of Ulmer. Many of the settlers took their fami- 
lies with them to Nova Scotia, and the little cluster of 
log-huts was almost deserted ; some of the Germans re- 
mained in the neighborhood of their conquest. The 
remnant, left behind, defenceless, were attacked by the 

U3 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

Canadian Indians, their cabins burnt, some men killed 
and others dragged away to a savage captivity, and the 
place lay desolate for the next three years. Then some 
settlers, led by Ulmer, returned ; a saw-mill was built ; 
other colonists came in 1752, and Samuel Waldo, son of 
the provincial general, was sent to Germany to enlist 
still more. He revamped the circular used by Zauber- 
biihler ten years before, and by means of it collected 
about fifteen hundred colonists. 

These were brought over under the leadership of 
Crell, a merchant and printer, and emigration agent of 
Philadelphia and Boston and Germany. He seems to 
have been as unstable as this description would imply, 
but by a curious combination of circumstances he had 
been brought into relations with Waldo on the one 
hand and the Palatinate on the other ; he was in the 
main an honest man, sincerely desirous that the then 
growing abuses of German emigration to the New World 
should be reformed. Through a short-lived German 
newspaper which Crell, among his other enterprises, once 
printed in Philadelphia, he had become acquainted with 
Heinrich Ehrenfried Luther, a type-founder and merchant 
of Frankfurt, an "Aulic Counselor," and an upright, 
honorable man. He was much distressed by the abuses 
which the agents and ship-masters of Rotterdam inflicted 
upon the plundered and deluded emigrants, and desired 
to start an emigration to New England and Nova Scotia 
which should be free from these faults. At first Crell 
appeared to Hofrath Luther to be the man for the place, 
and he encouraged him to go up and down the Rhine 
Valley collecting emigrants for New England. But 
Luther had overrated Crell and underrated the strength 

134 



German Colonization in New England 

of the ship-owners' combination. He was forced to give 
up his attempt to reform the abuses from the German 
side of the ocean ; this reformation was reserved for the 
humble but practical " German Societies" formed in the 
cities of America where Germans resided. But this is 
another and a most interesting and honorable story, to 
be told in its own place. 

Before Luther ceased to patronize him, Crell had pro- 
cured a small number of Germans, whom he accom- 
panied across the ocean and settled, some in Waldo- 
boro, where they were for a time dependent upon the 
charitj' of the province and of the struggling pioneers 
who had preceded them and were just beginning to 
repair the desolations of war and Indian forays ; some 
Crell sent to begin the colony of Frankfort in Maine, 
and some to settle about " Fort Massachusetts." Some 
were also assigned to the settlement in the town of 
Braintree, Massachusetts, which was to be named " New 
Germantown," and to rival the old one near Philadelphia, 
which had now been for nearly seventy years the first 
home of German immigrants in Pennsylvania, and a 
centre of Teutonic life, language, and culture. 

The stories of the two Massachusetts settlements are 
soon told. The settlers in "the German townships so- 
called at Fort Massachusetts" petitioned the General 
Court in 1753 to lay them out land, grant them lots "for 
the first settled Protestant minister, for the Ministry and 
for the School." They tell how they "were induced at 
a very great expense to come over to America, that a 
number of us not being able to pay so great an expence 
as our passage from Germany necessarily involved us in, 
we have been obliged to go to labour with our hands in 

135 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

order to Discharge said expence, which some of us have 
now cleared." The records add that " Mr. Crellius has 
failed of bringing forward said settlements and that the 
poor petitioners are to be left without any aid." Among 
the names signed to this petition is that of Daniel Sachs, 
the great-grandfather of John G. Saxe the poet. The 
settlers called their little colony " Leydensdorp," in 
memory of the sufferings (leiden) which they had en- 
dured in their pioneer days. But later information fails 
to give us any account of this frontier post of Germany 
in the wilderness of Massachusetts. 

Of New Germantown we have more knowledge. For 
a time it appeared destined to prosper : Benjamin 
Franklin invested in a few town lots, thus evidencing the 
faith of that usually sagacious philosopher in the Yankee 
project. On Crell's failure to carry out his plans for the 
settlement, two Englishmen, Palmer and Cranch, under- 
took to employ the " Palatines" in some glass-works to 
be established. The pressing needs of the people were 
relieved by public charity, dispensed through " Mr. 
Elter," the provincial interpreter, who supplied them 
with beds and blankets. A few additions came to their 
number. But the glass-works persistently refused to be 
profitable, perhaps because only the coarsest and most 
inferior grades of goods were manufactured. The General 
Court, who must have been heartily tired of their Teutonic 
speculation, were again appealed to, this time to permit 
a lottery for the benefit of the " infant industry" of glass- 
blowing. Even this mode of encouragement (often ap- 
plied to church-building by our pious ancestors) failed to 
galvanize into life the glass-works of "Germantown." 
The colony in Braintree broke up after a brief and un- 

136 



German Colonization in New England 

fortunate existence of about seven years, the colonists — 
many of them — joined their fellow-countrymen in Maine, 
and " New Germantown" as a Teutonic community 
ceased to exist. 

The colonies on the coast of Maine — at that time, of 
course, part of Massachusetts — seem to have been more 
attractive to emigrants, in spite of the hardships of the 
pioneers and the attacks of the Indians, who, after Brad- 
dock's defeat, constantly harried the settlers. The 
details of their sufferings are the same that we meet 
with all along the frontier upon which the Germans were 
settled, from the coves of " hundred-harbored Maine" to 
the log-cabins of the Carolinas, and they need not be re- 
capitulated. Everywhere are the same stories of pio- 
neers shot down or tomahawked in their little clearings, 
of women defending their cabins or fleeing with babies 
in their arms to the nearest fort, of boys taken into an 
Indian captivity from which they were often reluctantly 
ransomed years after, of a blue-eyed Gretchen who weeps 
over the death of " Indian Margaret's" baby, its brains 
dashed out by a furious white ranger. Of these alarums 
and excursions the Germans of Maine had their full 
share, but in the later years of the French and Indian 
War they seem to have been exempt from attack. 

As soon as the settlements were freed from fear of 
savage foray, German colonization proceeded rapidly. 
We have seen the arrival in the Christmas-tide of 1753 
of the pioneers of "Frankfort on the Kennebec." A 
German newspaper presently gave its readers a glowing 
account of this rival of Frankfurt-am- Main, in which 
forty families already resided ; the population was to be 
increased to one hundred families, — a thing more easily 

137 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

said than done. The poor children of the Fatherland 
were meanwhile employed in building a fort for defence 
against the savages, in patrolling the woods as a company 
of rangers for the same purpose, and enduring all the 
hardships of pioneer life. By 1756, however, most of 
the emigrants had served out their passage money and 
were able to buy themselves farms. In a few years the 
neighboring town of Dresden was laid out, and into this 
Frankfort was incorporated, its name lost, and so disap- 
pears from the page of history the rival of the two Ger- 
man cities on the Oder and the Main. 

About the same time, a little later than the foundation 
of this metropolis of many hopes, was that of Fryeburg, 
in the eastern foot-hills of the White Mountains on the 
New Hampshire border. To this romantic spot, remi- 
niscent of their Swiss mountains, Joseph Frey led a 
colony from the Bernese Oberland. They tarried for 
some years after their landing, in Boston, on account of 
the disturbed condition of this frontier, and here was 
born the subsequent pastor of their village church, Wil- 
helm Fessenden. His grandson, William Pitt Fessenden, 
and the descendant of the town's founder, Senator Frye, 
have represented their State in the United States Senate, 
and the last named was one of the commissioners to 
negotiate the treaty of peace which closed the Spanish- 
American War of 1898. 

But new troubles were gathering round the Waldo- 
boro settlers. In 1759 an expedition was sent up the 
Penobscot River to build a fort which should take pos- 
session of that countiy ; Waldo accompanied the soldiers, 
for he believed his patent to extend thither and wished 
to see his land. Arriving at a point opposite Bangor, 

138 



German Colonization in New England 

he withdrew a few paces, looked around, and exclaiming, 
" Here are my bounds," instantly fell dead of apoplexy. 
His sudden death was regarded by the colonists as a 
punishment for his dishonest treatment of them and the 
sufferings which they had endured from his criminal 
carelessness of his promises. After his death uncer- 
tainty arose as to the limits of his patent, and the out- 
come of tedious and involved negotiations was that the 
Broad Bay settlers were obliged to buy their lands a 
second time from the representative of the Pemaquid 
Company. Many did so, but a number, indignant at 
the dishonesty, as they considered it, of requiring them 
to buy their lands twice over, resolved to leave their 
hard-won plantations in the wilderness and emigrate to 
the South. 

The reasons for this are bound up in the ecclesiastical 
history of the little settlement. We have seen how per- 
sistently the Germans endeavored to keep up some sort 
of church service under the leadership of their school- 
master Ulmer. In 1760 the congregation erected a 
church ; a very humble specimen of architecture it was, 
but no elaborate cathedral of their Rhenish home could 
have represented more devotion or sacrifice. The floor 
was of logs " hewn as smooth as their tools could make 
them," the windows of sheepskin in default of glass, and 
the pulpit was for ten years unpainted until the first 
craftsman of that sort in the settlement decorated it with 
a coat of paint. But it was dedicated with great joy, 
amid the tears of some old people who had worshipped 
in the churches of the Fatherland, and "wept when they 
remembered Zion." 

Their clergyman — " Dr." Schaeffer as he was called, 

139 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

for he united the medical and clerical functions — was 
of a kind grievously abundant in pioneer times. It 
proved that the beautiful woman whom he brought with 
him to Broad Bay was the seduced wife of another ; his 
learning, both medical and religious, was as problematical 
as his moral character, and avarice, dishonesty, and im- 
pudence seem to have been his most distinctive quali- 
ties. His disgusted flock made futile efforts to rid them- 
selves of him, but he retained his place until his Toryism 
in the Revolution made his downfall inevitable. 

It was not strange that when a pious Moravian brother, 
George Soelle, came to the little flock in the Maine 
woods that they heard him gladl\-, and also listened to 
his project of a removal to a settlement of his church in 
Carolina. In 1767 tliey were favored with a visit from 
Bishop Ettwein of the Brethren's Unity, who described 
the advantages of Salem in North Carolina, a Moravian 
settlement, so enticingly that a half dozen families went 
thither from Maine ; in the next year others went and 
their pastor with them. 

Two years later a large number of the settlers of 
Broad Bay (which was to be named Waldoboro when 
shortly after incorporated) left their homes which they 
had won by such sacrifices from the wilderness, and fol- 
lowed their townsmen to the South. In the despair and 
exasperation which possessed them, as they were again 
and again annoyed by claims of ever-new "proprietors" 
to own their land, some of the emigrants destroyed with 
their own hands their houses and barns, pulled down 
their fences, and filled their fields with stones. It is said 
that three hundred people left Waldoboro in this despair- 
incT fligrht. This later emis^ration went not to Salem, but 

140 



German Colonization in New England 

to Buffalo Creek, in the present Cabarrus County, North 
Carolina. It is probable that this last emigration did 
not consist of Moravians, for we subsequently find them 
served by a Lutheran pastor, the Rev. Adolph Nussman, 
Many of the Waldoboro colonists remained behind, 
accommodating themselves to circumstances, purchased 
their land from the self-styled proprietors, and formed 
the only Teutonic community in New England which 
retained for generations the impress of its German origin. 
It is not strange that the endeavors which were made to 
draw to the waste places of New England the stream of 
German colonists which was so enriching Pennsylvania, 
were not successful. Forsaken to .starve and freeze, 
cheated and plundered on every hand, the determination 
of the Germans towards the honest land of Penn was 
but the natural conclusion of the whole matter. 



141 



CHAPTER XV 

THE SALZBURGERS IN GEORGIA AND THE PENNSYLVANIA 
GERMANS IN NORTH CAROLINA 

About two years after the unfortunate experiment of 
Purysburg had been begun, another colony was started 
in the neighboring province of Georgia. The founda- 
tion of this colony, and the character of its founder, 
General Oglethorpe, recalls to us in many ways the pious 
and idyllic beginnings of Pennsylvania and the lofty 
purposes of William Penn. To be sure, Oglethorpe was 
not the only powerful representative of a persecuted 
sect ; he was a soldier as well as a philanthropist, and we 
shall see him later founding an outpost against the power 
of Spain, daring "to singe the Spaniard's beard" in a 
spirit worthy of Drake himself, and gallantly defending 
his little fort of Frederica with a handful of soldiers 
against a Spanish attack apparently overwhelming in 
numbers. He was anxious to secure industrious colo- 
nists for his new plantations in America, but doubtless 
sympathy with persecuted Protestants had much to do 
with attracting him towards the Salzburgers. 

These devout Lutherans were the remnants of men 
who had kept their faith pure in the Tyrolean Alps for 
two centuries, often in the face of bloody persecutions. 
In inteivals of quiet they had greatly increased in num- 
bers, until in the great persecution of 1729—32 thirty 
thousand of them were exiled from their Tyrolese 
homes. The Archbishop of Salzburg, Leopold, Count 

142 



The Salzburgers in Georgia 

Firmian, was zealous for his faith, and fancied that by- 
severe measures of persecution and repression he could 
rid his orthodox land of the Lutheran heresy. But he 
little understood the faithful, simple, resolute peasants 
with whom he had to deal. Their Bibles and Lutheran 
books were confiscated and burnt, the owners whipped 
and imprisoned ; the property of the Protestants was 
taken from them, they were exiled from the mountain 
homes which they loved with all the passionate tenacity 
of the dwellers in the Alps ; worst blow of all, their 
children were taken from them to be brought up in mon- 
asteries in the Catholic faith ; yet the Lutherans of Salz- 
burg never faltered. They took joyfully the spoiling of 
their goods and left homes and hearths singing Luther's 
high-hearted hymn : 

" Nehmen sie den Leib 
Gut, Ehr, Kind und Weib, 
Lass fahren dahin. 
Sie habens kein Gewinn. 
Das Reich muss uns doch bleiben." 

Long trains of these exiles for conscience' sake passed 
through Germany, exciting generosity and admiration 
wherever they came. One of the favorite hymns sung 
on their marches was the exiles' song composed by one 
of their number, Schaitberger, who had himself tasted 
the bitterness not only of exile, but that of having 
his two daughters rent from him to be trained in the 
abhorred faith which persecuted him. Yet he could 
say, bravely, — 

'' Thy will, O God, be done ! May I 
Still cheerfully obey thee. 
And may thine arm of power and love 
Encompass still and stay me ; 
143 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

Forth from my home I now must go. 

My children ! must I leave them ? 
O God, my tears in anguish flow. 

Shall I no more receive them ? 
My God, conduct me to a place. 

Though in some distant nation, 
Where I may have thy glorious word 

And learn thy great salvation." 

By far the largest number of these exiles, twenty thou- 
sand of them, settled in Prussia. But a small band ar- 
riving at Augsburg in 1733 so excited the compassion 
and admiration of Pastor Urlsperger, of that city, that he 
busied himself to collect money, clothing, etc., to relieve 
their immediate needs, and then, through the London 
" Society for Promoting Christian Knowledge," planned 
the emigration of these persecuted Salzburgers to Ogle- 
thorpe's new colony. The Tyrolese naturally felt fear 
at going so far from home, to distant wilds beyond the 
seas, and the stories of the ill-treatment and the broken 
promises suffered by the "poor Palatines" of the Great 
Exodus were known even to these peasants from the 
Alps. But Urlsperger succeeded in allaying their well- 
grounded distrust. Large promises (which, it is good to 
be able to say, were afterwards performed) were made 
of free passage and support and land to be given the 
colonists in Georgia. Pastors and school-masters were 
provided ; the emigrants were taken to England and 
sailed from Dover in January, 1734, under the care of a 
devout and upright young nobleman. Baron von Reck, 
and with two pastors, Bolzius and Gronau, trained at 
Halle and representing the spirit of that noble founda- 
tion in its best days. 

The voyage was uneventful and fortunate ; on the i ith 

144 



The Salzburgers in Georgia 

of March their ship, the " Purysburg," reached their de- 
sired haven, and the devout Salzburgers recognized with 
deUght that this was " Reminiscere Sunday" and that 
the gospel for the day related how their Master had that 
day come to the sea-coast fleeing from the persecutions 
of his own people. Recognizing the good hand of their 
God upon them, they resolved to keep the day annually 
as one of thanksgiving, and this was observed "for a 
very long time." Their settlement from the same pious 
motive was to be named Ebenezer, — " Hitherto hath the 
Lord helped us." 

Oglethorpe was at Charleston ready to embark for 
England on a mission in the interest of his infant colony, 
but he delayed his departure to go with von Reck and 
a few of the leaders of the Salzburgers to choose a site 
for the new settlement. One was selected, about twenty- 
five miles up the Savannah River. It was thought to be 
at once healthful, beautiful, and convenient of access 
from Savannah, the capital of the new colony, though 
it ultimately proved to be none of the three. 

Here the infant settlement passed through those trials 
incident to new "plantations." The first colony, which 
consisted of seventy or eighty persons, contained no 
mechanics, and the Alpine peasants proved, as might 
have been expected, awkward pioneers. Sickness broke 
out, and there were a number of deaths ; but the 
Germans endured all in triumphant courage. With the 
next year brighter days dawned. A number of their 
fellow-countrymen joined them in 1735, and among 
them were artisans who built houses and a boat, mills 
and causeways and bridges for Ebenezer. The days 
they were obliged to stagger along the swampy roads 
lo 145 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

from Savannah with packs of provisions on their backs 
were over. 

In 1736 occurred what was known as the "Great 
Embarkation." Two ships arrived in Savannah, con- 
taining a number of people, and rarely have the small 
emigrations of that early time brought in one ** trans- 
port" — to use the phrase then common — the seeds of so 
many various projects and tendencies. Besides the 
Salzburgers, who were conveyed by their noble friend 
Baron von Reck, came a company of German soldiers 
under Captain Hermsdorf, destined as the garrison of 
Oglethorpe's new defence against the threatening power 
of Spain, — Frederica, the fort of St. Simon's Island, 
There were a score or so of Moravians under the con- 
duct of their bishop, Nitschmann, the first representative 
of the sect which was in a few years to become so 
prominent, and in the main so happily active, in German- 
American life. And there were also an intolerant, ascetic 
young English clergyman and his gentler, humbler 
brother, going " to teach the Georgia Indians the nature 
of Christianity." On the voyage over a fearful storm 
had torn the rigging and threatened to engulf the ship ; 
yet amidst the wild or speechless terror of the English 
passengers, the Germans sang hymns unfalteringly. The 
young ascetic, himself trembling at the prospect of an 
eternity for which he felt entirely unprepared, asked 
one of the Germans, after the storm was over, "Were 
you not afraid ?" " I thank God, no," answered the 
man. " But were not your women and children afraid?" 
" No," replied the Salzburger, " our women and children 
are not afraid to die." John Wesley, for it was he, 
pondered these sayings in his heart, and they were 

146 



The Salzbiirgers in Georgia 

destined, with the influence of the subsequent teaching 
of the Moravians, to lead his feet into the way of peace. 

Meanwhile, the Salzburgers, unconscious of their in- 
fluence on the development of one of the moral and 
religious forces of the century, passed on to the little 
village in the swamps of the Savannah or to the new 
fort of Frederica. To the latter place most were unwilling 
to go, " as fighting was against their religion ;" but we 
find in the next year a Lutheran church was organized 
there, its members consisting apparently of the German 
soldiers under Captain Hermsdorf and a few " Saltz- 
burghers who fish and hunt for their subsistence." The 
minister sent them — the Rev. Mr. Driesler, who served 
also as school-master — lived only a year, and his widow 
soon sadly reported that there was no service of any 
kind held in Frederica. The Swiss minister, Ziibli, a 
prominent figure of later times in Georgia, shepherded 
this flock until driven away by the desperate attack of 
the Spaniards upon the place in 1742. What part, if 
any, the few German inhabitants, took in the gallant de- 
fence of the place, we cannot tell ; but in a few years 
the whole settlement — Germans, Highlanders, and Eng- 
lish, fort and village, and " Mr. Oglethorpe's Farm" — had 
disappeared ; and now only the ruins, overgrown with 
luxuriant creepers, remain to show that here was an out- 
post against the power of Spain, where obscure Germans 
bore their frequent part as colonists and pioneers. 

The Salzburgers who had been taken to Ebenezer to 
re-enforce that place were dissatisfied at the condition of 
things which they found there. The site was proved to 
be unfortunate and unhealthy. The creek which was to 
furnish communication with the town of Savannah was 

147 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

either a shallow "branch," or, in rain, swamped the vil- 
lage. The soil was thin and unfit for farming. So the 
two ministers of Ebenezer, who led their people in all 
things, temporal and spiritual, w^ent to plead with Ogle- 
thorpe for a new location, and the general, though con- 
vinced that the same trouble would follow on a new site, 
acceded to the wish of the Salzburgers in order to con- 
tent them. 

The new Ebenezer, contrary to Oglethorpe's opinion, 
proved a better site than the old, and the Salzburgers 
felt satisfied with the change. For the next few years 
there were constant accessions, but no large " transport" 
arrived until 1741, when a number of Germans, not only 
Salzburgers, but Swiss and Pfalzer as well, came to swell 
the population of Ebenezer. There were now about 
twelve hundred Germans in the colony of Georgia. 
Among the later arrivals came many who "served" for 
their passage, — what were known in Pennsylvania as 
" redemptioners," — and they commonly became both 
prosperous and respectable after serving this apprentice- 
ship in the new country'. The people in Ebenezer now 
laid out their town, following the plan of Oglethorpe, 
which has made the present city of Savannah the lovely 
tree-shaded town that it is. The Salzburgers, however, 
only built a school and an orphan-house on the model of 
the Halle Orphanage where their beloved pastors were 
trained, and in this building they worshipped for years, 
until they were able to erect the church, now the only 
relic of Ebenezer — then a fine structure, according to the 
standard of the time, and surmounted by the rather un- 
usual emblem of a swan, the Luther coat-of-arms, in 
allusion to Hus's triumphant dying prophecy : " To-day 

148 



The Salzburgers in Georgia 

you burn a goose, but from my ashes a swan shall arise ; 
him you cannot destroy." 

Other churches through the country ministered to the 
religious wants of the large German population, and these 
churches bore scriptural names, — Jerusalem, Bethany, 
Zion, Goshen ; as far as Savannah their ministers labored. 
The Ebenezer people were much favored in their minis- 
ters ; Bolzius in particular was a man not only of godli- 
ness, learning, and a lovely spirit, but of great practical 
and executive ability. He labored with especial earnest- 
ness to introduce the manufacture of silk, but this finally 
proved unprofitable, and only the mulberry-trees around 
the Ebenezer church remain of it. In 1752 a large 
number of Germans came to this part of the country, 
St. Matthaeus's parish, as it was then designated : they 
were Wiirtembergers, and were led by the Rev. Mr. 
Rabenhorst, who became an assistant pastor at Ebe- 
nezer. The period from that time until the Revolution 
desolated the settlement of these pious people was the 
high-water-mark of Ebenezer's prosperity. 

It was probably the most fortunate of all the German 
settlements in the Southern States, which were now nu- 
merous. Beside the large number of Germans residing 
in the two cities of Charleston and Savannah, and ex- 
cluding the abortive attempts at colonization at Frederica 
and Purysburg, there were large tracts in South Carolina, 
such as Orangeburg and Saxe-Gotha, which were purely 
German in origin, life, and language ; there were other 
isolated settlements in the Carolinas, and from the 
northern settlements of Pennsylvania along the Monocacy 
and the frontier of Maryland, through the great Valley 
of Virginia, by Winchester and Shepherdstown, Stras- 

149 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

burg, and Woodstock, a new movement was beginning: 
the emigration of the Pennsylvania Germans into North 
Carolina, which filled the mountain counties on the 
western frontier of the old North State with German 
pioneers. 

They came overland through the Valley of Virginia, 
having their furniture, bedding, etc., packed in the big 
wagons which were as characteristic of Pennsylvania 
Germans as the schooners of the Massachusetts coast of 
the trading Yankees in that part of the country. The 
cattle, sheep, and hogs were driven with the train ; so, 
slowly they went southward until the highlands of North 
Carolina were reached. Here the Germans settled, 
made a clearing, built a log cabin, and soon a little 
transplanted bit of " Pennsylvania Germany" was seen 
there, and only the patois of " Pennsylvania Dutch" was 
heard. Hard-working, thrifty, and simple, they were 
anxious to have the Gospel preached among them after 
their own fashion, and many " union" churches, in which 
Lutheran and Reformed worshipped side by side, arose 
among them. In the dearth of settled ministers, the 
school-master filled the same place which he had done in 
earlier German settlements : read service and sometimes 
a sermon, baptized children in apparent danger of death, 
— the so-called " Noth-taufe," which the Lutheran, like 
the Catholic, Church permits, — and read over the dead 
of the pioneers some liturgy of the Fatherland. 

The first fringe of German settlement was overleaped 
by the Scotch-Irish, who pressed to the frontier, but they 
again were passed by the Germans, who settled in the 
extreme western counties of North Carolina ; thus " the 
different European nationalities from which these settlers 

150 



The Salzburgers in Georgia 

originated, occupying strips of land across the State 
mostly in a southwesterly direction, like so many strata 
of a geological formation." But the German colonizing 
of North Carolina was very slow in comparison with 
that of the provinces of Georgia and South Carolina. 
No ship-loads of emigrants came, as to Ebenezer and 
Saxe-Gotha ; the emigration was not from Germany, 
but from Pennsylvania, and came slowly, drop by drop, 
not in communities, but as isolated families, until by 
the outbreak of the Revolution the whole west of the 
State was permeated with German influence. 



151 



CHAPTER XVI 



THE GERMAN PRESS 



The colonization of North Carolina was, as we have 
seen, a Pennsylvania German movement in distinction 
from the emigration of European Germans. It was one 
of the manifestations of the life evolved from new con- 
ditions by the descendants of the Palatines amid the 
forests of Pennsylvania. This life, social, intellectual, 
and religious, was showing itself in many forms. One 
of the most interesting, and one perhaps least known to 
the outside English-speaking world, is the development 
of the German press. 

It is the common belief among Americans of what 
they call the Anglo-Saxon race that the colonial Ger- 
mans were utterly ignorant, illiterate, and destitute of 
any form of intellectual life. Many of them, doubtless, 
were so ; the numerical majority of pioneers must al- 
ways be such, — hewers of wood and drawers of water, 
fitted for the rough tasks and hardships of their life. But 
we have seen among the early German immigrants men 
like Pastorius, the founder of Germantown, learned in 
all the wisdom of the Fatherland ; deeply read mystics 
like Kelpius ; leaders and organizers such as the 
Weisers, or Bolzius of Ebenezer ; men, at least of 
ability, such as Beissel must have possessed to obtain 
over many men of many minds the ascendency which 
he had. Such men were certainly neither ignorant nor 
stupid. 

152 



The German Press 

Seidensticker, the authority on this as on other parts 
of the history of the Pennsylvania Germans, remarks 
that in printing, as in immigration, the sects take the 
lead. Conrad Beissel and some of his Ephrata brethren, 
perhaps the most classical examples of the Pennsylvania 
German sectarians, were the first to commit their teach- 
ings to print in the German language in America. 
They published several tracts and poems setting forth 
the views of Beissel — for the others were simply follow- 
ers and echoes — upon religious matters, Sabbath ob- 
servance, celibacy, and mysticism. 

Some of these works issued from the press of Andrew 
Bradford ; but the later ones were given to the world 
through the medium of that most practical and irre- 
ligious philosopher, " Poor Richard." The imprint of 
Benjamin Franklin upon the title-page of the Ephrata 
brethren's theosophic lucubrations is absurdly comic. 
These first pamphlets were printed in Roman type, but 
in 1739 there issued from the newly founded press of 
Christoph Saur, of Germantown, the first book printed 
in America with German type, — the "Zionitische 
Weyrauchs-Hiigel," or Zionite Hill of Incense, a collec- 
tion of the mystical hymns of Ephrata, as queer as was 
their title. 

The press of Saur, and the life and character of the 
man himself and his son and successor, merit a more 
than passing notice. Born in Laasphe, Westphalia, in 
1693, Christoph Saur the elder (as we must call him to 
distinguish him from his son and successor) grew up in 
an atmosphere of the queerest religious ideas as well as 
the widest possible toleration of them. The tiny county 
of Wittgenstein was a nest of sectaries, — the sects of 

153 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

the "Awakened," the "Inspired," and all manner of 
solitary mystics and hermits ; at Schwarzenau, in this 
country, as we have seen, the Dunkers took their rise. 
Christoph Saur was a married man, nearly thirtj^ years 
of age, when he came with his wife and child to Penn- 
sylvania. There he settled in Lancaster County, not far 
from the cloister of the mystical and celibate Dunker 
Beissel, whom Saur had known in Germany. He found 
little in common with this domineering fanatic, but his 
wife, Maria Christina, fell so completely under the in- 
fluence of "Father Friedsam" that she left her husband 
and her little son and entered the cloister, living there 
for nearly a score of years as "Sister Marcella." 

This destruction of his domestic happiness may well 
have embittered Saur against the home near Ephrata. 
He soon quitted that neighborhood and settled in Ger- 
mantown, where, in 1738, he announced the foundation 
of the first German press of America. " I could find 
no more convenient device," he says, "to make it 
known throughout the land than to print an almanac." 
This, as well as the long line of its followers up to the 
Revolution, contained what the publisher regarded as 
improving reading, articles upon medical, historical, or 
scientific subjects, intermixed with Saur's own quaint and 
characteristic observations. In order to spare his patrons 
useless inquiries he informs them that his expected in- 
voices of Bibles, devotional works, and the like have not 
arrived ; he has, however, a chemical or rather alchemis- 
tic book for sale, but it is only for intelligent and curi- 
ous people. Many persons having inquired whether he 
would not soon publish a German paper, he tells the 
would-be subscribers that he is not minded to misuse 

154 



The German Press 

valuable time in collecting and printing " useless things, 
much less those which are only lies," but he holds out 
hopes that he may in time print "trustworthy news and 
such as would be of profit to the reader." 

In the next year Saur carried out this project, and for 
many years continued to edify, admonish, and instruct 
the German public through the columns of a paper 
which bore various names. At first it was called " Ge- 
schichts-Schreiber ; ' ' presently noting with sorrow that his 
news was not always accurate, Saur changed the name 
to " Berichte," by this meaning to imply that these were 
only " reports ;" finally, under his son's editorship, it be- 
came simply the " Germantown Zeitung." It had a 
large subscription list for the time and language, having 
four thousand subscribers, not only throughout Pennsyl- 
vania, but in Virginia and Georgia and the Carolinas. 
It was a power in the land, as the managers of the Ger- 
man school project found to their cost. The size of the 
paper gradually increased ; at first a little four-page 
quarto like the almanac, and appearing only monthly, 
it grew to a folio of weekly appearance. 

The contents are indescribably quaint and original ; a 
picture of German life in Pennsylvania for the greater 
part of the colonial period could be painted from the 
simple sketches furnished by its pages. First comes the 
news of foreign parts, and from home ports like Boston ; 
to these items Saur often appends comments. Any war 
news rouses the peace-loving Dunker to a very rage of 
non-resistance. His bookselling business is advertised, 
as also the concerns of others who have farms or mer- 
chandise to sell, or have found a gold piece upon the 
road, and wish with scrupulous honesty to restore it to 

155 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

the owner, or whose runaway negroes or sen-ants are 
described with unflattering accurac\-. In its columns, 
also, Saur conducted his numerous and vigorous contro- 
versies with others of differing religious views, or with 
the powers that were. 

Besides all this editorial work, which would of itself 
have filled less capable hands. Saur carried on for twent\' 
years a large printing, publishing, and importing busi- 
ness. His first book, the Weyrauchs-Hiigel, was. with 
one exception, the largest book printed up to that time 
in Pennsylvania, containing nearl\- eight hundred pages. 
Four years after, Christoph Saur published the first 
edition of the Bible printed in a European language in 
America, the splendid quarto " German town Bible." 
Two other editions were called for, and when, in 1776, 
the third edition was published, the younger Saur could 
still sa\% witli pride, that no other European nation had 
yet printed the Bible in tlieir language in the Western 
hemisphere. When at the close of the Revolution the 
first English Bible was printed in America, it was under- 
taken only when well guaranteed. 

Evidently our German forefathers were neither so 
poor, so rude, nor so irreligious as they have been pic- 
tured by some English writers, when they could support 
the issue of so many editions of a large and expensive 
Bible in their mother tongue. 

The otlier works issued from Saur's press were — 
as might have been inferred from the character of the 
publisher, as well as his public — largely devotional or 
religious works. Most of the German settlers of the 
New World had come here as much from religious 
motives as from a praiseworthy desire to better their 



The GeriiKin Press 

condition. It was for them that the German presses 
teemed with hymn-books, catechisms, sermons, and, 
alas ! very many and very virulent controversies at- 
tending Count Zinzendorf's visit to Pennsylvania in 
1742, when he attempted a premature experiment in 
Christian Union among the " many-creeded men" of 
Penn's province. Zinzendorf's part}' had their printing 
done mainly b\' Franklin. Saur published the pamphlets 
of the church people in opposition to the scheme of the 
"Congregation of God in the Spirit." This unedifying 
subject busied Saur's press for several years. Soon after, 
Franklin's "Plain Truth" in regard to frontier defence 
roused all the non-resistance in the Germantown printer, 
and in 1 764 another like controversy emplo}'ed his press. 
But of all Saur's controversies, the most important and 
most misunderstood is that relative to the German 
schools, and the dust of the quarrel still obscures the 
issue in our own day. The project for the establishment 
of these "charity schools," as they were also and offen- 
siv'cly called, was partially religious, — or better, sectarian, 
— partially political. It was a section of that perennial 
question which led to the squabbles between the Quaker 
non-resistant Assembly and the militant proprietors. 
The German sects were nearly all opposed to war, even 
to the defence of the frontiers against French wiles and 
Indian massacre. But the German church people, 
Lutheran and Reformed, and the German pioneers . 
pushing into the wilderness had no such conscientious 
scruples. So Saur represented and led but a section of 
his countr}^men, tliough the Germans at that time, as 
well as later, were portrayed as sluggish and cowardly 
in the defence of their adopted countr\'. 

157 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

The project for the foundation of schools among the 
German population oi^ Pennsylvania was begun with 
collections made by the Rev. ^Michael Schlatter, the 
organizer of the Reformed Church in this country. He 
was a Swiss German from St. Gall, — an energetic, active, 
hard-working man. The Reformed Church of the Pala- 
tinate had been requested by the emigrants of their 
faith in Penns}-lvania to send ministers to their destitute 
churches, but the Palatinate Church, itself persecuted 
and poor, handed on the appeal to the brethren of Hol- 
land, who lived in wealth and religious freedom. The 
Dutch Reformed Church sent out Schlatter, who came 
to Boston in 1 746, where he writes, " I was received 
with much love and kindness by the Hon. I. Wendel, a 
distinguished Holland merchant, and an officer of the 
Government there," and, Ave may add, an ancestor of 
Dr. Oliver Wendell Holmes. So welcomed, Schlatter's 
impressions of the countr\- across which he journeyed 
to his place of work in Pennsylvania, were naturally fa- 
vorable. " I can truly testify," he says, " that oflen when 
contemplating the houses, the level countr}% the climate, 
and the sensible inhabitants, living in the same manner, 
enjoying the same culture, pursuing the same business, 
and differing but little from Europeans, I could scared}- 
realize that I was in a distant quarter of the world." 

Naturally, such an observer did not take the same 
gloom}' view of the barbarit}- in which the Germans 
were sunk, as was evidenced by the later appeals for 
the charit}- school project. But Schlatter willing!}' as- 
sumed the superintendence of the schools, which he 
could easil}- combine with his extensive and often diffi- 
cult journeyings to all the little settlements where the 

15S 



The German Press 

people of his church were to be found. We sec him 
going as far as Lehigh, Northampton, and Bucks Coun- 
ties in Pennsylvania, to Lancaster, the largest town out- 
side of Philadelphia, to " Yorktown, newly laid out," to 
New York, "in the Rarentans," — probably the German 
Valley churches, now long since passed over to the Pres- 
byterian body ; or Schlatter takes his " great journey" 
to Monocacy, where he meets and commends that best 
of school-masters, Schley ; to Conococheague, where 
"the people built them a fort," to be improved by Brad- 
dock into Fort Frederick ; thence down the Valley of 
Virginia to Winchester, Woodstock, Strasburg, then 
nameless, or with other names. 

He knew the country well, and should have known 
the people better than to fall in blindly with the charity 
school scheme, now being engineered by that perfervid 
Scot, the Rev. William Smith, who knew little of the 
conditions or characteristics of the German population, 
and was not so judicious in his advocacy of the scheme 
as he was ardent and energetic. Christoph Saur held 
the opinions of most Dunkers on the subject, of the 
uselessness of any but the simplest education, and re- 
garded the fear of the Lord as not onl}' the beginning, 
but the end of all wisdom. Smith, when he met with 
discouragement in his project, through the influence of 
Saur in his paper, published a plan for making good 
citizens of the Germans by taking away their votes 
(which strengthened the Quaker party) and by prohibit- 
ing the use of their language in legal documents, or the 
publication of books or papers in that language ; this 
last suggestion, of course, was especially aimed iit Saur, 
who was also vilified as " a papist emissary." 

159 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

The society for German schools next estabhshed a 
press of their own to counteract the baleful influence of 
the Germantown printer, and published therefrom a 
German paper (the " Philadelphische Zeitung"), a few 
books, and the "Rules and Articles of War," an extraor- 
dinary issue for an educational and benevolent society, 
surely. It shows the political complexion of the whole 
project, which soon proved a failure. The Lutherans, 
who had at first favored it, were not likely to be won by 
Dr. Smith's suggestion that through the instrumentality 
of his schools he could easily convert all the Lutherans 
to the Episcopal Church. The Reformed Church also 
opposed it, and Schlatter's personal popularity suffered 
to such an extent from his connection with it that he 
was obliged to give up his work as superintendent alike 
of churches and schools in Pennsylvania, and accept a 
chaplaincy in the army. The "Philadelphische Zeitung" 
came to an untimely end, through the ill-advised pub- 
lication in it of an article abusing the Quaker party in 
the Assembly. For this the versatile Dr. Smith was im- 
prisoned, the paper stopped, and Saur and the " Ger- 
mantowner Zeitung" left in victorious possession of the 
field. 

The elder Christoph Saur died in 1758, and his son 
of the same name succeeded him. The younger Saur 
was not only of the same name but of the same nature. 
Li the simple, yet dignified obituary of his father, which 
he published in their paper, the son expressed his un- 
willingness to take upon himself " the burden of the 
press ;" but he felt himself obliged " for the sake of God 
and his neighbor" to take it up and carry it on in the 
spirit of the founder ; for, he said, " to the honor of God 

160 



The German Press 

and the benefit of the country this press is dedicated, 
and I shall seek always to keep this aim in view." The 
younger Saur was a member and minister in the Dunker 
Church, and therefore as determined and conscientious a 
non-resistant as had been his father ; but as he fell on 
evil times, his principles cost him more dearly. He had 
had charge of the printing of English books before his 
father's death; after the whole "burden of the press" 
fell upon him, he issued many important works, the 
most imposing being the second and third editions of 
the Bible. The last edition brought him in more money 
than he had expected, so he printed and distributed 
gratis " Ein geistliches Magazien, " (1764) containing 
hymns, translations of Law's "Serious Call," the pious 
school-master Dock's admonition to his scholars, and the 
like matter. This " Magazien" was the first religious 
periodical published in America, and thus the Germans 
whom Dr. Smith portrayed as sunk in irreligion and bar- 
barism were the founders of the religious press of to-day. 

The younger Saur was a man of as various talents 
and as much energy as his father ; he was the originator 
of the stoves which, improved by Franklin, attained a 
wide popularity under the latter's name ; he was also the 
first type-founder of America, and the convention of 
1775 urged patriots to make use of these types in en- 
couragement of home manufactures. The opposition to 
the political school project, which we have seen the elder 
Saur fight through, was not inherited by his son ; the 
younger man was one of the founders of the German- 
town Academy. 

He was a wealthy, prosperous, and respected man 
when the storms of the Revolution broke upon him. 
II 161 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

As a conscientious non-resistant, Saur had no sympathy 
with the war, but there is no evidence that he was dis- 
loyal. Taking advantage of a technical disobedience to 
an order of the Assembly, Saur was arrested, treated 
with much personal harshness and indignity, banished 
from Germantown, and his entire property confis- 
cated, — house, lands, and press. Saur felt himself " not 
free," in the Quaker phrase, to appeal to the law to right 
this outrageous injustice, and "he took jo\'fulIy the 
spoiling of his goods," after the apostle's advice : but he 
smarted under the imputation of disIo}-alt}', and inquired 
pathetically of the meeting of his brothers in faith, *' If 
a man is declared a traitor without a cause, is it just to 
let him lie forever under that reproach?" 

He survived his temporal ruin six years, living in the 
house of a friend, and supporting himself partially by 
working at his trade of book-binder. He also minis- 
tered among his brethren, and shortly before his death 
walked a dozen miles to preach to a little flock in the 
neighborhood, " returning to his home in the same apos- 
tolic fashion." There he died, at the age of sixt}--three, 
and surely he must have had the blessing of those who 
suffer for righteousness' sake. 

The other important German press of colonial times, 
that of the Brotherhood of Ephrata, is historically con- 
nected with the beginnings of the press founded by the 
elder Saur. We have seen that the " Hill of Incense," 
the strangel}' named hymn-book of the cloister, was the 
first bound book printed upon the new Germantown 
press. During the time it was passing through the 
printer's hands, Saur discovered amid its mystical dog- 
gerel the following verse, — 

162 



The German Press 

" Seliet, sehet, sehet an 
Sehet, sehet an den Mann 
Der von Gott erhohet ist, 
Der ist unser Herr unci Christ." 

[" Look, look, look, look at the man who is exalted by God, who is our 
Lord and Christ."] 

He thought Beissel, the head of the community, in- 
tended himself by this, and on asking his copy-holder, 
a warm adherent of Beissel, had his suspicions con- 
firmed. Saur wrote to the prior, reproaching him for 
such a display of spiritual pride ; Beissel replied by 
adducing the text, " Answer not a fool according to his 
folly," and Saur, not unnaturally exasperated by this 
sort of religious polemics, retorted by an argument which 
was the most crushing one, to Beissel's mystical mind, 
which he could have devised : he proved that Beissel's 
name in its Latinized form could be made to yield the 
apocalyptic " Number of the Beast !" Needless to say, 
Saur printed no more hymn-books for the monks of 
Ephrata. 

A few years after began the issue from the cloister's 
press of Beissel's theosophic works and a string of 
hymn-books, whose extraordinary names are only 
equalled by their wonderful contents : we listen to the 
"Song of the Lonely and Deserted Turtle Dove," to an 
"Echo" of this, and to the "Newly enlarged Song" of 
the same melancholy bird. We have, too, "An Agree- 
able Odor of Roses and Lilies," and a " Paradisaic 
Wonderplay." To encounter the sober verity of a title 
like the " Chronicon Ephratense" is a relief from this 
fauna and flora, until the modern student attempts to 
read the chronicle of our Pennsylvania monastery, with 

i6i 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

its mystical dialect, its pictures of the sentimentality of 
the sisters, and the unconditional surrender of the 
brethren to Beissel's overweening tyranny, when he 
feels as near insanity as was the community itself. 

The Ephrata press also did some custom-work, and 
its most notable effort in this line was the production 
of that greatly reverenced Mennonite work, an account 
of Anabaptist martyrdoms, Van Braght's " Blutige Schau- 
platz," vernacularly known as the "Martyr-Book." It 
was printed in 1748, a splendid folio of twelve hundred 
pages, " the largest and in some respects the most re- 
markable book of the colonial period." The translation 
from the Dutch original into German, which was now 
the language of most of the Mennonites in Pennsylvania, 
was made by Peter Miller, the learned and devout suc- 
cessor of Beissel as prior of Ephrata. The type, paper, 
and binding, are the best of their kind and time, and 
the book is a monument worthy to stand by the side of 
the Germantown Bible, as a testimony to the excellent 
craftsmanship of the German colonial press. 

The story of the Saurs and their rivals has carried us 
chronologically far beyond the time of foundation of 
some other German presses. There were many men 
who attempted, with more or less success, to publish 
German books and newspapers. Among these short- 
lived presses were those of Crell, whom we have seen 
endeavoring to colonize Braintree, Massachusetts, with 
his countrymen ; and the Armbruster brothers, who had 
a long and checkered career in the unsuccessful service 
of the "art preservative of all arts." Gotthard Arm- 
bruster published in 1747, a polemical pamphlet against 
Saur, who reprints in his paper an extract from its abuse 

164 



The German Press 

"whereby the author wishes to prove, that lie is a good 
Christian." Nevertheless, when next year Armbruster 
put out the prospectus of a German newspaper, Saur 
quoted it in his " Berichte," closing with the request that 
"dishonest subscribers who had never paid him should 
not treat his rival in the same fashion." After some time 
Anton Armbruster emerges, carrying on German printing 
for Benjamin Franklin, and publishing the paper which 
was designed to counteract Saur's opposition to the 
charity schools. But in 1763 he writes Franklin, "I do 
assure you the distress is very great," and he, his pub- 
lications, and his paper, the "Fama," soon disappear 
from view. Indeed, we should not have heard any blast 
from this trumpet of Fame, were it not for controversies 
carried on with Heinrich Miller, and his paper the 
" Staatsbote," which was in some sort a successor to 
the reputation and favor of Saur's " Germantowner 
Zeitung. " 

Heinrich Miller was apparently, in his earlier years, 
the most restless of tramp printers. A Waldecker by 
birth, a Moravian in religious sympathies, a "passionate 
traveller" in taste, he had worked as printer in Zurich, 
Leipzic, Altona, London, Hamburg, Amsterdam, Rot- 
terdam, Antwerp, Brussels, Paris, Philadelphia, Marien- 
burg (where he established a business), again in Eng- 
land, Scotland, and Philadelphia, where he was employed 
by Franklin. He returned to Germany, set up a press 
of his own in London, but finally came back to Phila- 
delphia in 1760 to found one of the most successful 
German presses of the period immediately preceding 
the Revolution. He was the printer to Congress, but 
during the war he retired from business to end his days 

16S 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

in the quiet of Moravian Bethlehem, and was succeeded 
by Steiner and Cist. 

Miller's press, in its difference from its predecessors, 
is very instructive as to the change which was coming 
over the face of things, and the attitude of the German 
population towards them. Miller, like all others, printed 
a calendar, and we have spoken of his " Staatsbote," 
which is said to have even outstripped Saur's paper in 
its circulation. He also, true to his Moravian sym- 
pathies, printed religious works, sermons, prayer-books, 
and the "Watchword," or daily texts of the Brethren's 
Unity. But a large and continually increasing propor- 
tion of his publications was of a political nature, — 
pamphlets for and against Franklin, addresses to various 
classes and conditions of men, dated, in the case of one 
of them, with the doggerel lines, — 

" Gedruckt zur Zeit und in dem Jahr, 
Da einem wider 'n Andem war." 

On the passage of the Stamp Act, Miller suspended his 
"Staatsbote," "until it would appear whether means 
can be found to escape from the chains forged for the 
people and from unbearable slavery." On March 19, 
1766, the "Staatsbote" issued an extra, announcing the 
repeal of the hated act, and headed with the verse, — 

" Den Herren lobt und beneydeit, 
Der von dem Stampel Act uns hat befteyt. ' ' 

But the patriotic services of Miller and the other Penn- 
sylvania Germans belong to another portion of the 
subject. 

To the presses of Germantown, Ephrata, and Phila- 
- 166 



The German Press 

delphia there were added, about the year 1774, those 
of Matthias Bartgis in Frederick, Maryland, and of 
Frantz (or Francis) Baily in Lancaster, Pennsylvania, 
besides the many attempts, extending over but a few 
years, to begin German printing in other localities ; but 
these mentioned make up the sum of living and active 
presses among the colonial Germans. It is a record of 
which their descendants need not to be ashamed. 

Perhaps it is owing as much to dense ignorance as to 
prejudiced unwillingness to accord honor where honor 
is due that the Pennsylvania Germans have been por- 
trayed as totally destitute of literary culture or aspira- 
tions, and that their presses have been described as only 
fountains of sermons and hymn-books. Their patronage 
of newspapers like Miller's and Saur's, their publication 
of two such monuments of typography as the German- 
town Bible and the Ephrata Martyr-Book, and the 
character and diversity of the books printed or im- 
ported for the German market, show that they were not 
all so ignorant, stolid, and degraded as they have been 
represented. 



167 



CHAPTER XVII 



THE MORAVIANS 



Connected with the emigration of the httle sect of 
Schwenkfelder, and also with that of tlie Protestant 
exiles of Salzburg, to Georgia, is the appearance in 
America of a sect much more widely known, — that 
ancient church of the " Bretliren's Unit}-, commonly 
called Mora\-ians. ■ ' Into the long and honorable his- 
tor\- of tliis remnant of John Hus's followers in Europe 
we cannot enter. It is onK- their life and labors in 
America which concern us. 

There is scarcely am-\vhere outside of Holy Writ so 
strong an instance of what seems the direct guidance of 
Pro\idence in tlie affairs of men as that which brought 
together tlie persecuted remnant of the " Bohemian 
Brethren" and their devout protector, Xicholas Louis, 
Count Zinzendorf The young nobleman had been 
educated in the straitest sect of Lutheran pietism on 
his Saxon estates by his aunt and grandmotlier, two 
"schone Seelen" of the t\-pe which Goethe has immor- 
talized. With a few like-minded friends, the young 
count, on coming of age, had designed a work for the 
revival of vital godliness in the Lutlieran Church, such 
as Spener had wrought and preached in the previous 
centur^•. When returning from his weddins: to the 
lovel\- and pious Countess Dorothea of Reuss, the noble 
bridal part}' came upon a company of people who were 

1 68 



The Moravians 

erecting a house in tlie woods at Bertlielsdorf, a newl}- 
purchased estate of tlie count's. On inquin-, it ap- 
peared that the\- were the Protestant exiles from 
Moravia, some remnants of the old Bretliren's Church, 
to whom the young count, knowing nothing of them 
save that they were persecuted for righteousness' sake, 
had granted an asylum on the Hutberg. Zinzendorf 
dismounted, talked and prayed with the exiles, and gave 
to their new settlement the name of Herrnhut (the 
watch or protection of the Lord). Then he and his 
bride went on their way, little knowing tliat these simple 
peasants and carpenters were those with whom their lot 
was hencefortli cast 

The count pursued his purpose, elided by some of his 
learned and noble friends, of awakening the Lutheran 
Church. But "his way had the Lord hedged in," as 
he would doubtless have expressed it. for he had a child- 
like, almost superstitious, confidence in the direct inter- 
position o{ God in all his concerns. His favor at court 
gradually waned, the protection upon his estates which 
he was fain to afford not only to the ^Moravians, but to 
the remnant of the Schwenkfelder and all other perse- 
cuted people, became ineffectual. Finally, in 1736, he 
was himself banished. On receiving the decree of ban- 
ishment Zinzendorf said, cheerfulh-, *'\Ve must collect 
the pilgrim congregation and proclaim the Sa\-iour to tlie 
world. Our home will be wherever the most real service 
is to be done for the Saviour." 

Foreseeing this likelihood of exile, Zinzendorf had 
endeavored to proxnde a place of refuge, but one plan 
after another fell through. He had thought of sending 
the Schwenkfelder to Georgia, with a little idea of es- 

169 



Tiie Germans in Colonial Time? 

tablishing the refuge which he sought from European 
persecution in Oglethorpe's colony of toleration. The 
Schwenkfelder had been persuaded, while on their way 
to embark, to change their destination for Penn's colony. 
But Zinzendorf still planned to settle the Brethren in 
Georgia, and so, on one of the transports which took 
over a Salzburger colony, were a few Mora\-ians led by 
their bishop, Spangenberg. 

As leader of the church in its early settlements in 
America, he should be more than mentioned. A Ger- 
man universit}- graduate, he, like Zinzendorf, had tried 
to work among tlie Lutheran Retists, but in \-ain, and 
finally theological hatred ran so high that Spangenberg 
was expelled from tlie Universit\- of Halle, the strong- 
hold of Pietism. He then came to Zinzendorf and the 
humble Moravians. iVlthough a learned and cultured 
man, he did not disdain the lowliest tasks. In the early 
hardships of the Georgian settlement he ser\-ed as cook. 
From Pennsylvania, two \-ears after, he writes : '* As re- 
gards m\' outAvard occupation, it is at present farm work ; 
but this is as much blessed to my soul as formerly m\- 
studying and Amting. For notliing, even in out\\"ard 
affairs, is in itself good or bad ; but whatever is done 
with the blessing of God thereby becomes good, whilst 
anything performed without God"s blessing becomes 
bad." Doubtless tliese practical occupations of the 
learned tlieologian helped him during the fort^- years of 
his service in the Xew World to guide the ** economies" 
of tlie settlements. Meanwhile, he did not neglect 
preaching, and it was while laboring for the unit\- of 
Christians in America that Spangenberg ^^Tote one of 
the first and finest Imnns which had their birth on our 



The Moravi:iiis 

soil. — •• Die Kirche Christi die Er geweiht," translated in 
tlic •• l.>iM Germanica :" 

" The churtli of Christ, that he hath hallowed here 
To he his house, is scattereil t;vr :u\d near. 
In Xortli aiui Soutli arid East and West abtvad. 
And yet in earth and heaven through Cluist her Ix»rvi 
The ChuTx-h is one. 

•'One member knoweih iH^t another hen?. 
And \-et their fellowship is true and near ; 
One is their Saviour aiui their Father one. 
One Spirit niles theui, and aiiK>ng them none 
Lives to himself. 

This was eminently true of Spangenbei^'s apostolic 
life. 

Vet tlie first \nsible outcome of the exertions and 
sacrifices of tlie Bretliren in Georgia w^as complete 
fiilure. Several companies of Bretliren were sent out, 
but tlieir settlement was \isited b}* sickness, tlieir hoped- 
for access to the Indians did not come to pass, and 
finally, when the Spaniard threatened Georgia and 
Oglctliorpe prepared for his gallant defence of Frederica, 
the Moraxnans were called upon to bear arms, which was 
opposed to tlieir principles, and tlie remnant of the 
Bretliren deserted their settlement in a disobedient ver\- 
un-Mora\nan fashion, and took refuge in Pennsyhania, 
ncvir Gt?rnianto\\ii. 

But meanwhile, other things were preparing for tliem. 
Re-enforcements were sent over for tlie Georgia settle- 
ment, under tlie leadersliip of Peter Bohler. This de- 
\"ouc man had been a friend and teacher of tlie Wesle\-s in 
Oxford ; through tlieni WTiitefield had heard of him. and 
when he arrived in Georgia, he eagerly sought him out 

171 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

When Bohler led tlie discouraged remnants oi the Mo- 
ravian colony of Georgia to Penns}l\'ania, Whiteheld 
canie to him and offered a tract which he had just 
bought at " tlie Forks of tlie Delaw-are" to tlie Mora- 
vians if they would build upon it a stone house to be 
used in Wliitefield's project of an orphan house. This 
was tlie " Xazareth Tract," upon which tlie church set- 
tlement of tliat name subsequently arose. 

Bohler jo}-fully accepted tlie offer. The Bretliren had 
no abiding place ; Spangenberg had been recalled to 
Europe, tlie little remnant was deprived of his ex- 
pected advice, and it was onh- Rohler's courage and 
cheerfulness which had kept the small company to- 
getlier. So tliey went joyfull\- tlirough the woods on 
foot a three days' journe\- from Germantown, the little 
band of " seven brethren and two sisters, and two 
boys," and, arriving on a May evening, sat down under 
a black-oak-tree and sang hymns of praise and thanks- 
giving to God. 

They went courageously to work, built a log house 
for a shelter, and besran tlie school-house, according to 
their contract with \MiitefieId. In December of the 
same year (1740). a small company of bretliren and 
sisters arrived to encourage tlie hearts of tlie beginners 
at Xazaretli. They stood in much need of cheer, for 
they had just received from Whitefield a peremptory- 
notice to quit his land " fortliwith." 

The reason for tlius ejecting these pious and cheerful 
exiles, in tlie deptli of winter, from tlieir promised 
refucre was that Whitefield had had a tlieological dispute 
and difference witli Bohler on the question of a " lim- 
ited atonement" ! Finding Bohler entertained tlie chari- 



The Moravians 

table faith that "Christ died for the ungodly," White- 
field evidenced his superior belief in the excellent 
articles of election and reprobation b\- turning out these 
miscreants from the " Xazareth Tract." But a certain 
Justice Irish gave them a tract upon the Lehigh. 
"Though not himself a professor of religion, yet he 
esteemed the Brethren as moral and industrious men, 
and highly disapproved of Mr. Whitefield's arbitrar}' 
conduct." Thus was founded Bethlehem, and here on 
Christmas-eve, 1741, came Count Zinzendorf and his 
part}-, and, being lodged in a house, part of which was 
used as a stable, " on Christmas-eve we called to mind 
the birth of our Saviour, and thus this new settlement 
received the name of Bethlehem." 

From the humble settlement which began in the 
stable reached out influences which covered the whole 
countr}-. The visit of Count Zinzendorf to America 
was the cause of much stir in religious circles here. 
The plans which he had come to carr}- out were many 
and various, and they were pursued with all his charac- 
teristic ardor and enthusiasm, and. we may add, without 
censoriousness, witli all his usual lack of judgment. 
His first; and nearest and dearest, plan was that for the 
foundation of the "Congregation of God in the Spirit," 
a sort of informal religious league, which never aimed 
at a corporate reunion of Christian sects, but was " to 
afford to all tlie children of God, tliough of different 
denominations, an opportunity not only of strengthening 
the bond of Christian fellowship, but of assisting each 
otlier in the mutual prosecution of tlie work of God in 
this countr}*." It was, as will be seen, a sort of prema- 
ture " Evangelical Alliance," appearing ere the times 

173 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

were ripe, and so doomed to failure. In the reception 
v-ith which it met, tlie Christianit}- of America did little 
credit to itself, as indeed Christianit}- in controversy 
rarely does. Zinzendorf was a fallible mortal ^\^tll many 
errors and weaknesses, but he at least abounded in 
that grace of love without which all other graces are 
as sounding brass and tinkling c\-mbals. His opponents 
could not be praised in this respect The s\Tiods, which 
were to be meetings for consultation as to the advance- 
ment of Christ's cause in Pennsyh^ania, after many 
changes of character and constituents, became tlie 
ecclesiastical s\niods of one, tlie Moraxnan Church. 

The controversies had at least one good effect, tliat 
of much increasing tlie acti\-it\- of tlie German press of 
Pennsylvania ; pamphlets in support of Zinzendorf and 
his part}- occupied tlie press of Benjamin Franklifi, while 
Saur's and occasionalh* some English presses poured 
fortli "Protestations,"" "Reports," and "Testimonies"' 
innumerable. "A Troubled One." Gruber the ni\-stic, 
gave voice to his distressed spirit in five pages of prose 
and tliree in verse against tlie count ; Boehni, the old 
Reformed minister, issued from Falkner's Swamp a 
"Faithful Warning." and in the next year a "Re- 
newed"" one. The school-master of Bethlehem sent 
out "Truthful Intelligence," and Zinzendorf, who held 
the pen of a too-ready writer, was fertile in "private 
declarations," and tlie like. Gilbert Tennent and otlier 
Presbyterian ministers clamored in tlie pulpit against 
" the damnable doctrine of tlie Moravians," and also 
called tlieir ^loravian fellow-Christians "locusts out of 
the bottomless pit " "foxes who spoil the vineyard o{ 
the Lord." and other worse names. Muhlenberg, who 

17.4 



The Moravians 

was just beginning his noble work of organization 
among tlie scattered Lutherans of the province, was 
not much more favorably inclined towards a part}- who 
were to occasion much trouble and irregularit\' in his 
disordered bishopric, and a perfect whirlwind of de- 
nunciation disturbed the religious atmosphere of German 
Penns}-lvania. 

It is not difficult, when one knows the stiff ortho- 
dox}-, the bigoted denominationalism, and tlie wild 
enthusiasm o( German religious life in that period, to 
understand wh}-, even across seas and in face of cr\-ing 
destitution of am- kind o{ preaching, tliat of the Mo- 
ravians stirred up tliis tempest ; but the picture is a 
painful one, and we gladh* turn from it to look at 
anotlier form of activity- which tlie ^Moravians alone of 
the German churches in America developed, the Indian 
missions. 

One of the numerous subjects which engaged tlie 
interest of tliat many-sided man, Zinzendorf, was the 
endeavor to do good to the Indians of Pennsvlvania. 
Missionar}- work had been from the first a leading 
object of tlie Moravian Church ; two }-ears before Count 
Zinzendorf's arrival a Moravian brotlier. Christian Henn,- 
Ranch, had begun a mission among the Indians at 
Shekomeko, on the border between the States of Xew 
York and Connecticut After indescribable discourage- 
ments and hardship among the filtliy, drunken, degraded 
savages, he and his fellow-workers gatliered a little 
Christian communit}-, smd a few converts, the firstlings 
of the Indian mission, were taken to Pennsylvania to be 
baptized at the Huguenot settlement of Oley, " in the 
bam of Mr. Van Dirk (there being no church there)." 

1/5 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

Zinzendorf \nsited the Shekomeko mission during his 
presence in this countr)' and made some otlier hard and 
perilous journeys into the Indians* countr}*. He was 
probably tlie first white man to set foot in the lovely 
and unfortunate Valley of Wyoming. His perils and 
joume\*ings were without especial result in tlie Indian 
work, which was being carried on by tlie Mora\*ian 
bretliren witli a hopeful, steadfast courage and resolu- 
tion which must win the admiration of all who know 
the long, sad, glorious history- of Moravian missions 
among tlie Indians, — that lengthy stor\- of faitliful and 
self-sacrificing efforts for tlie red man, constantly 
harassed and destroyed b}- the greed and fear of tlie 
white men. 

Of tliis unhappy condition the missionaries at Sheko- 
meko soon had experience. As soon as tlieir little work 
had begun to flourish and expand, it drew upon them 
tlie opposition of the autliorities of Connecticut and 
New York, who dragged the brethren hither and yon to 
hearings and trials, until one of tlie missionaries died 
from fatigue and exposure ; forbade their preaching ; 
arrested and imprisoned Post and another, who were 
guilt}' of tlie crime of residing among tlie Mohawk 
Indians to learn tlieir language ; and finally exiled tlie 
missionaries on the information of a " clerg}-man of 
Dover, who had said tliey were in league with the 
Papists." 

After being left to themselves for some years, tlie 
Indian converts of Shekomeko were removed to Beth- 
lehem, where, after a teniporar\- lodgement was found 
for them near Betlilehem, at a place expressively called 
Friedenshiitten or the "Tents of Peace." they were at 

176 



The Moravians 

length settled at " Gnadenhiitten on the Mahony," not 
far from tlie present Mauch Chunk. This was organ- 
ized as much upon the model of the otlier church 
settlements as was possible where the inhabitants were 
recently converted Indians instead oC the pious and 
energetic children of the fatherland, and in a few years 
the brethren said, witii innocent satisfaction, that it had 
" become a very regular and pleasant town." At tlie 
earnest request of tlie nortliem Indians, a blacksmith- 
shop was established for them at Shamokin (Sunbur}-) ; 
and scattered Indian settlements and families were con- 
stantl}- ministered to b}' the missionaries. 

The accounts of tlie Indian work are full of interest- 
ing details of Indian speech and mode of life and 
thought which makes them decidedly superior in human 
interest to tlie ordinar}- run of missionar}' reports, usually 
a painfully edifxnng form of literature. One of the 
converts being exhorted by a Puritan clerg\-man of 
Connecticut to Sabbatli-keeping widi otiier \-irtues, 
naively tells the missionan,- that "as to doing no work 
on Sunday, tliat was easy," — probably ha\-ing no great 
desire to work on any da}- of tlie week. Another in- 
formed a "Dutch clerg}-man" who had indeed baptized 
him but given him no otlier pastoral oversight that he 
acted much worse than one who planted Indian com, 
"for," he said, "tlie planter sometimes goes to see 
whether his corn grows or not" The Indian converts 
used, for a long time after tlie deatli of the missionan.- 
who departed during the persecutions of the Xew York 
government, to go to wail and weep over his grave in 
die heart-rending Indian fashion. The visiting of 
heathen Indians at Gnadenhiitten was a grievous trouble 
I- 177 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

and expense, for they could not be sent away cmpt\-, 
however poor tlieir host might be. if the forest reputa- 
tion for hospitalit}- was to be maintained, and tlie savage 
clansmen were often neitlier safe nor pleasant guests. 
We shall see how this Indian rite of hospitality- witliout 
grudging or question was to bring suspicion, ruin, and 
death upon tlie Indian to\\Tis of Ohio fort}- years later. 
But now all was peaceful and "pleasant" in Gnaden- 
hutten on the Maliano}-. 

Life in the other church settlements of the Moravians 
was also full of interest, energy-, and \'igor. Its form 
was a sufficiently strange one. and it is no wonder that 
outsiders, unacquainted alike with tlie life and the forms 
of expression of the Brethren's Unit)- found it then, and 
find it still, incomprehensible. The first thing to note 
is that the early church settlement of Betlilehem was 
what is known as a pilgrim congregation, tliat is. the 
whole communit}* was a strongly organized society- for 
evangeUstic work. ]\Iany o( the brethren and sisters 
(who, it may be wortli while to state, were not celibates, 
and took no vows) were sent from time to time to make 
what Friends would call "religious visits" in tlie sur- 
rounding country-, or, in ^loravian phrase, "received 
and accepted the appointment to" some Indian Mission. 
Those of the community- not on diese expeditions 
worked for the support of the missionaries and tiie 
whole settlement. They did not give up their property 
to the community, but the}- did so offer their time and 
work. When the " fishermen." as Zinzendorf had named 
the missionaries, returned from a preaching-tour, the}- 
might be and were set to burning bricks, splitting rails, 
mending shoes, or they nursed the sick or "served" the 

17S 



The Moravians 

stranger. The bretliren estabhshed their own postal 
ser\-ice between Bethlehem and Philadelphia. The 
" single brethren" worked the farms, and houses were 
provided in which they were lodged and fed, under 
the oversight of a temporal and spiritual head ; the 
"single sisters" did spinning, and were provided for in 
the same way. The children, taken from their parents 
when two years old, were brought up in church schools ; 
but the present ancient and celebrated Moravian schools 
had another and later origin. All these divisions of tlie 
population, with tlie married brethren and sisters, were 
organized into "choirs," which had their own meetings, 
love-feasts, etc. One peculiarity' of Moravian life must 
be mentioned, — die text-book published for many }-ears 
by the eldership of the church, in all the various lan- 
guages in which the}' ha\e members, with passages of 
Scripture and h}-mn verses for every day of the year ; 
the allusions to tlie " watchword" for the day are so fre- 
quent in ^Moravian histon>- that it ma\- be worth while to 
explain this, now a common custom with man}- pious 
persons, but first introduced into the Brethren's Unit}'. 

It would not be of value to note the missionar}' ac- 
tivit}- of the Brethren, — tlie places in which tlie}' planted 
churches like otlier denominations ; onh* those spots where 
they were the pioneers are to be mentioned. Besides 
Bethlehem and Xazareth (^which presently returned to 
tlie possession of tlie church through Whitefield's finan- 
cial embarrassments) they founded settlements at Lititz 
(Lancaster Count}-) in 1747 ; at Graceham, near the 
^Nlonocac}- ■ settlements of ]\Iar}-land, about the same 
time ; at Emaus, near Betlilehem, in tlie same year as 
Lititz ; and ten }'ears later was begun the Wachovia or 

179 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

Salem community in North Carolina. Only Bethlehem 
had the Economy or church settlement idea in its full- 
ness of detail, although some features of it were found 
in most or all of the other places named. 

The southern society, so far from the parent one in 
Bethlehem, merits special note. An English nobleman. 
Lord Granville, having an extensive tract of land in 
North Carolina, was anxious to fill it with German colo- 
nists, and, knowing something of the Moravians and 
likine what he knew, he offered his land to Zinzendorf, 
who bought it, and sent Spangenberg and a few other 
brethren south from Bethlehem to select the especial 
portion upon which they should found a church settle- 
ment 

The province of North Carolina had been left behind 
in the general advance of American colonization, and of 
German colonists in particular there had been none in 
North Carolina since de Graffenried, who died forty 
years before, had brought his hapless Swiss to begin 
the settlement of New Berne. The province was a 
trackless, almost uninhabited pine forest, save for a thin 
fringe of settlements along the coast. Here Spangen- 
berg and his company wandered about, nearly starving ; 
for their provisions gave out and winter was approaching. 
Finally, on the Yadkin river they selected the tract to 
which they gave the name of Wachovia, in memory of 
a former estate, Wachau, of the Zinzendorf family in 
Austria. 

In October, 1753, a company of twelve single 
brethren set out from Bethlehem to go, by way of the 
Valley of Virginia, to the new tract. They took their 
simple possessions in a six-horse wagon. As they 

180. 



The Moravians 

passed along, some of the brethren would get a job of 
threshing oats from the farmers along the route in order 
to earn feed for their horses. So they came to their 
new home, took possession of a deserted log cabin, and 
kept a love-feast, being much cheered by the " daily 
word," which was " I know where thou dwellest, even in 
a desert place," whose appropriateness was enforced as 
they heard the wolves howling round their cabin that 
night. 

They found some neighbors, — in the pioneer sense of 
neighborhood, — scattered cabins, containing mostly 
Pennsylvania German settlers, for the tide of southward 
emigration from Penn's province had begun to flow. 
One of the brethren was a doctor and one a tailor, and 
the gifts of these were both prized, though the tailor was 
somewhat puzzled when a young frontiersman brought him 
deerskins instead of linsey-woolsey out of which to fashion 
his breeches. In the next year a minister was sent them, 
who is recorded as an accomplished Hebrew scholar, — 
a dubious qualification for life on the Yadkin, one would 
think, were it not also recorded that he was "a very 
humble sei^vant of the Lord, ready to do the meanest 
service for his brethren, and particularly adapted for 
such a station in the wilderness." Soon a mill was 
built, to which people came one hundred miles to have 
their grain ground, and the settlement became such a 
resort for any one in need of any kind of temporal or 
spiritual service that it was very fittingly named Beth- 
abara, — "house of passing ;" presently came the Indian 
wars, and the peaceful brethren were compelled to 
fortify their settlement, when it became a refuge for 
the people of the countryside even as far as Virginia. 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

The Indians, however, were entertained and fed so long 
as they behaved themselves well, and Bethabara became 
known among them as the " Dutch Fort, where there 
are good people and much bread." 

On account of this influx of refugees, many of whom 
desired to cast in their lot with these "good people," 
who had fed and sheltered them in their extremity, a 
new town was laid out by the indefatigable Spangen- 
berg, who had come to look after this Southern outpost 
of the church, and called " Bethania," and on July i8th, 
1759, the first house there was occupied by the accom- 
plished Hebrew scholar and his wife, " the daily word 
being, ' I will fear no evil, for Thou art with me,' which 
proved a word of much comfort to them amid the hor- 
rors of a cruel war, and the consequent necessity of 
being on the alert night and day." 

Spangenberg and some other brethren daily rode 
through the woods from Bethabara to the new settle- 
ment to see how all went on, the other brethren not a 
little fearful of Indian ambuscade. But Spangenberg, 
putting his horse to the gallop, came safely through 
the forest, the brethren racing after him, and so, in this 
very unclerical fashion, the daily visit was made. After- 
wards, the Indians revealed that they had often at- 
tempted to waylay the cavalcade, but could not, " for 
the Butchers had big, fat horses, and rode like the 
devil." One Easter Sunday during the war, a company 
of militia suddenly arrived just as Spangenberg had 
finished his sermon, and insisted that he should preach 
them another in English, with which request the doughty 
bishop gladly complied. 

When the war had been ended for some years, it was 

182 



The Moravians 

thought time to carry out Zinzendorf's original plan, and 
found in the centre of the tract the principal settlement, 
and so, in 1766, Salem was begun. From this centre. 
Bishop Ettwein not only ministered to his brethren, but 
extended his labors to the Germans who had begun to 
found in South Carolina the flourishing settlements on 
the Congaree, Saluda, and Broad Rivers. 

Around Salem a number of little settlements grew 
up which were at first organized in accordance with the 
pattern of the famous " Economy" at Bethlehem, but 
this was given up just previous to the Revolution. 
Friedberg v/as formed from Pennsylvania German emi- 
grants ; Friedland was to be a " land of peace" for the 
much-tried emigrants from Broad Bay, in Maine, led there 
by the Moravian brother Soelle in 1769, arriving, after 
a shipwreck on the coast of Virginia, " poor, wayworn, 
and many of them in ill health." Hope was the cheer- 
ful name of a village of English people, most of 
whom had learnt to know and love the brethren while 
refugees in the troubled times of the Indian war, at 
the " Dutch Fort, where there were good people and 
much bread." 



i«3 



CHAPTER XVIII 

CONRAD WEISER AND THE FRONTIER WARS 

In 1742 there came to Pennsylvania the man who was 
to perform for the " dispersed Lutherans of Pennsyl- 
vania" the same service of reorganization and shepherd- 
ing which Schlatter did for the Reformed people and 
John de Watteville for the Moravians. This was Hein- 
rich Melchior Muhlenberg, affectionately called the 
" patriarch" of the Lutheran church in America. He 
was a Saxon by birth, — a man of education, piety, tact, 
ability, and exhaustless energy. For nearly half a 
century he poured out all these gifts in the service of 
his beloved church, and brought it from a condition of 
formless disorganization, ministered to — where it was 
served at all — by weak or unworthy men, to a state of 
vigorous and fruitful growth. Had not the foolish 
policy of adhering to the German tongue been for a 
time imposed upon the church, it might have grown 
from the slip of Muhlenberg's fostering to a vine that 
should overshadow the land ; its present great numerical 
increase comes largely from the later emigration of 
Germans, although the old seats of the church in Penn- 
sylvania, New York, New Jersey, Virginia, and the 
Carolinas have never been entirely desolate. 

Muhlenberg's reports and diaries, sent during his 
whole service to the Fathers at Halle, that seat of 
German Pietism from which he and his colleagues were 

184 



Conrad Weiser and the Frontier Wars 

sent out, are an immense fund of the pioneer history of 
the Lutheran church in this country, and indeed his hfe 
and activities touch the history of the province at many 
points. His journeys and those of his brethren through 
the country show us where Germans were congregated ; 
that the circle of settlement had now by the middle of 
the century reached northward and westward until it 
touched what Muhlenberg calls "the first blue Moun- 
tains," — North Mountain, the northern wall of the Leba- 
non and Kittatinny Valleys ; that the western parts of 
Maryland and Virginia were settled by Germans who had 
their organized churches ; how It was possible, with con- 
siderable hardship, as the patriarch found, to go from 
the neighborhood of Philadelphia to Kingston on the 
Hudson, where was another group of Germans anxious 
to be ministered to, and that even the far-south colonies 
of Georgia and the Carolinas were interested in and for 
their brethren in the faith in Pennsylvania. 

It is to be deplored that no edition of the Halle 
Reports is easily obtainable in this country, outside of 
large historical collections, and that the projects for its 
republication with historical notes, and its translation 
with or without these notes have never been carried out 
to completeness, from lack of encouragement. From 
its pages can be formed a picture of the provincial life 
in the German settlements on the frontier, — the scat- 
tered log houses in the woods, the bridgeless streams, 
the little log churches at which a school-master perhaps 
taught the children on week-days or edified the shep- 
herdless flock on Sundays from a " postil" of some 
good Lutheran divine. We see the "vagabond shep- 
herds of souls," the unordained men, "who were of no 

185 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

account at home," yet came here, took possession of 
churches, and vexed Muhlenberg's righteous soul. We 
see, too, at the house of his father-in-law Conrad 
Weiser, Indian chiefs on their way to extort presents 
from the proprietaries that they might "sit quiet," in 
spite of stealthy French incitements. We have pic- 
tures of the sea-voyages, — one hundred days on the 
ocean, when the supply of water was exhausted, and 
the passengers gave themselves up to die of thirst. 
And we see, too, tlie busy, bustling provincial towns, 
containing schools and learned men with whom these 
graduates of German universities held brotlierly counsel, 
their presses teeming with controversial pamphlets, — a 
tempest in a teapot, lively, if small, — with churches and 
church quarrels in abundance. It is the time when the 
New England provincials, aided by a company of the 
Broad Bay Germans, were takmg Louisburg ; when the 
lilies of France dropped forever from INIontreal and 
Quebec and Fort Duquesne before Bouquet and his 
Royal American regiment of Germans ; of Braddock's 
defeat and the Indian massacres, and the " Great Run- 
away" of frightened pioneers from the frontiers of 
settlement ; when Dr. Smith was tr}dng to found the 
German schools, and succeeding in founding the Uni- 
versit}- of Pennsylvania ; when Saur was fulminating 
against him and the Ephrata brethren were in full tide 
of prosperity ; when Franklin was writing on frontier 
defence ; when the Stamp Act was passed and repealed, 
and the Revolution was preparing. 

A character and life of much more general interest 
than that of the patriarch Muhlenberg, was that of 
Muhlenberg's father-in-law, " Conrad Weiser, the Inter- 

i86 



Connid Wciser and the Frontier Wars 

preter." It is a life which touches the story of the 
colonial Germans at many points. A child of one of 
the poor Palatines sent over to New York by Queen 
Anne, in Pennsylvania attracted by the influences pro- 
ceding from Ephrata and Bethlehem, concerned in all 
the Indian negotiations of the province for twenty 
years, a colonel of provincial militia in the terrible time 
following Braddock's defeat, — his biography might be 
the thread upon which to collect the annals of the Ger- 
man settlements in the middle colonies. 

His own autobiography tells the story of his early 
life in the best and simplest manner. After speaking 
of the Great Exodus, the arrival of the Germans in 
New York, and their dissatisfaction with Livingston's 
treatment of them, he saj-s : " Bread was veiy dear, 
but the people worked hard for a living, and the old 
settlers were very kind and did much good to the 
Germans, though some of a different disposition were 
not wanting. A chief of the INIaqua (Mohawk) nation, 
named Quaynant, visited ni}- father, and the\' agreed 
that I should go v/ith Quaynant into his countr\- to learn 
the IMohawk language. I accompanied him, and 
reached the Mohawk countr\' in the latter part of No- 
vember, and lived with the Indians ; here I suffered 
much from the excessive cold, for I was but badly 
clothed, and towards spring also from hunger, for the 
Indians had nothing to eat. I was frequently obliged 
to hide from drunken Indians. Towards the end of 
Jul)-, I returned to my father, and had learned the 
greater part of the Mohawk language. There were 
always Mohawks among us hunting, so that there was 
always something for me to do in interpreting, but 

187 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

without pay." After an account of the land troubles at 
Schoharie and his father's unsuccessful embassy to 
London, Conrad Weiser continues : " The people got 
news of the land on Suataro and Tulpehocken in Penn- 
sylvania ; many of them united and cut a road from 
Schochary to the Susquehanna river, carried their goods 
there, made canoes, floated down the river to the mouth 
of the Suataro creek, and drove their cattle overland." 

Conrad did not come with them, but he and his young 
wife remained behind, living near Schoharie among the 
Indians for some years longer. Then he followed his 
people to Pennsylvania, where he farmed and taught 
school until, two years after his emigration, an Indian 
of the Six Nations, Shekellamy, stopped at his house in 
Tulpehocken and asked Conrad Weiser to go with him 
to Philadelphia as a volunteer interpreter ; Conrad, who 
seems to have had and retained a sincere friendship for 
his " comrades" — as he calls them — of the red race, ac- 
ceded to the request, and gave so much satisfaction 
that in 1732 he became the official interpreter for the 
province. 

"We have always found Conrad faithful and honest," 
said the Indians, "he is a good and true man, and has 
spoken their words and our words, — not his own." He 
was untiring in his labors ; it make one's mind stand 
aghast to read the mere records of his journeys : to the 
great council of the Six Nations at Onondago, to 
Shamokin for the Governors of ]\Ian,'land and \"irginia, 
as well as his own great province, to Lancaster and the 
great treaty there in 1744 ; in the next year we find him 
in New York " surrounded by chiefs." Then he goes to 
tell the Indians of John Penn's death, for he has a deep 

188 



Conrad Weiser and the Frontier Wars 

perception of the complexity and importance of 
Indian etiquette, and is never weary in urging the pro- 
vincial authorities to conform to it. " It is customary 
with the Indians," he admonishes the governor, "that 
let what will happen, the chiefs will not stir to do any 
service or business when they are in mourning till they 
have a small present in order to wipe off their tears and 
comfort their heart." 

Weiser went twice with Moravian missionaries to the 
Indians : once with Zinzendorf to Wyoming, where his 
timeh' return probably saved the count's life, for 
Weiser's knowledge of the Indian character made him 
justly apprehensive for the good man's safety ; a second 
time he accompanied Bishop Spangenberg and others 
to the Great Council Fire to beg from the Six Nations 
a place of refuge for their exiled Christian Indians. 
Weiser's ideas of the best form for missionary work to 
take among these people are original, but he certainly 
spoke with authority, for no man of his time knew the 
savage character as he knew it. He advises that " mis- 
sionaries should take up their abode in the midst of the 
Indians, and strive to make themselves thorough masters 
of the language, conform as far as possible to their 
dress, manners, and customs, yet reprove their vices ; 
translate the Bible into tlieir own language," and that 
"the missionaries should study the Indian tunes and 
melodies, and conve)'- to them the gospel in such melo- 
dies in order to make an abiding impression ; and 
patiently wait for the fruits of their labors." 

His views on selling liquor to Indians were vigorously 
expressed : " If rightly considered, death without judge 
or jur\' to any man that carries rum to sell to any In- 

i8q 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

dian town, is the only remedy to prevent that trade, for 
nothing else will do. It is an abomination before God 
and man." 

Weiser himself was a religious man, a Lutheran in 
affiliation, though he had a kindlier feeling for the 
Moravians, especially on their first appearance in Penn- 
sylvania, than most of his church, and although there 
was a strange interlude in his very common-sense career 
when he, with many others in his vicinity, fell under 
the influence of that extraordinaiy Dunker monk, 
Beissel, and was even baptized by him into his com- 
munity. But this was only a passing impression, serving 
rather to show the inexplicable attraction of the " Magus 
of Conestoga" than the reHgious instability of Conrad 
Weiser. 

In 1748 Weiser took his "great journey to the Ohio" 
to exercise his vast influence upon the western Indians, 
who were disaffected through the machinations of 
France ; in the next year he went to New York among 
his old Indian friends, where he had lived in the first 
years of his manhood ; in 1750 he was "most of the 
year from home." In the following years he was in 
Albany, trying to find out what were the intentions of 
"Colonel Johnston ;" in "Aughwick," where he heard 
from an Indian king the latter's poor opinion of the 
strategy exhibited at Fort Necessity by a Virginia 
militia officer, one Colonel Washington, who " would by 
no means take advice from the Indians ; he lay at one 
place from one full moon to the other, and made no 
fortification at all but that little thing upon the mead- 
ows. He is a good-natured man," said the savage 
potentate, tolerantly, "but had no experience." All 

190 



Conrad Weiser and the Frontier Wars 

these toilsome journeys, these wordy and formal nego- 
tiations were to be in vain. The Council at Albany, 
where Franklin, who was accompanied by Weiser, tried 
to unite the English colonists against the encroachments 
of the French was equally unavailing. 

In the year 1/55 the storm broke, — the terrible 
"French and Indian War," with its tales of frontier 
massacre and frontier defence. The German colonists 
from their situation on the outskirts of civilization felt 
the full force of it. The frontiers of Pennsylvania had 
always enjoyed peace from savage invasion, the German 
pioneers notoriously having the friendship and confi- 
dence of the Indians beyond that of any other nation- 
ality. But after Braddock's defeat, which Weiser dares 
only allude to as " the unhappy action last summer," 
when the red men felt their power, and when their 
stealthy scouts found (to their surprise) the outposts of 
white settlement almost unguarded, they fell upon the 
frontiersmen, and butchered, scalped, and, in the phrase 
of the time, " captivated" all Europeans alike. The 
Germans were settled along the Blue Ridge, and almost 
in the centre of this curve of settlement lay Weiser's 
home at Tulpehocken ; so he was in the heart of things, 
and with his well-known ability and unparalleled knowl- 
edge of Indian ways, was naturally selected to take a 
prominent part in the defence. 

At the beginnins; of the alarm. Governor Morris 
writes him : " I heartily commend your courage and 
zeal, and that you may have the greater authority, I 
have appointed you a colonel by the commission here- 
with. I leave it to your judgment and discretion, which 
I know are great, to do what is best for the safety of 

191 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

the people and service of the Crown." Nobly did 
Weiser deserve this confidence ; his letters from day to 
day during those times of terror give us a most lively 
picture of the border warfare as it affected the Germans. 

The first blow fell upon the Moravian mission station 
at Gnadenhiitten on the Mahanoy (the present site of 
Weissport). Though conscious of their danger, the 
brethren had made a covenant to remain at the post of 
duty, and were sitting unsuspectingly at supper when, 
alarmed by the barking of the dogs, who were always 
very sensitive to the prowling presence of Indians, a 
brother threw open the door, and was shot upon the 
threshold. The Indians shot down several of the mis- 
sionary family, while others effected their escape to the 
surrounding woods. The savages then set fire to the 
cabin, and Brother Senseman, one of the pious laborers, 
as he cowered in the woods, saw his wife in the midst 
of the burning house standing with folded hands, as she 
said, submissively, " 'Tis well, dear Saviour, I expected 
nothing else." 

In a fortnight the whole border was deserted, the 
loneliest cabins were places of ashes, plunder, and blood, 
and the terrified people crowded into Nazareth and 
Bethlehem for refuge. The Whitefield House at the 
former place was stockaded, and the brethren met in a 
love-feast " to celebrate the completion of their work," — 
rather a curious cause for such a feast. The Rose Inn 
at Nazareth also sheltered fugitives ; the mill at Fried- 
ensthal, where the single brethren furnished an efficient 
garrison, was stockaded, and from Bethlehem we have 
the following account : " Your Honor can easily guess 
at the trouble and consternation we must be in on this 

192 



Conrad Weiser and the Frontier Wars 

occasion in these parts. As to Bethlehem, we have 
taken all the precautions in our power for our Defence ; 
we have taken all our little Infants from [the school at] 
Nazareth to Bethlehem for the greater security. Al- 
though our gracious King and parliament have been 
pleased to exempt those among us of tender conscience 
from bearing arms, yet there are many amongst us who 
make no scruple of defending themselves against such 
cruel savages. But, alas, what can we do, having very 
few arms and little or no ammunition, and we are now, 
as it were, become the frontiers." 

While the "merciless Savages" were invading Le- 
high County, other parties were terrorizing the more 
southerly frontiers of Berks and Lancaster Counties. 
A month after the massacre at Gnadenhiitten of the 
missionaries, Weiser writes of an attack on the west 
side of the Susquehanna: "The people here seem 
to be senseless, and say the Indians will never come 
this side of the Susquehanna river, but I fear they will." 
His fears were abundantly justified ; four days after he 
writes the information brought by his sons, who had 
just " arrived from Shamokin, where they had been to 
help down their cousin with his family. .People are 
coming away in a great hurry. I pray, sir, don't slight 
it. The lives of many thousand are in the utmost 
danger. It is no false alarm. I suppose in a few days 
not one family will be seen on the other side of the 
Kittatiny Hills." But he tells another friend bravely 
that he has sent " to alarm the township in this neigh- 
borhood, and to meet me early in the morning to con- 
sult what to do, and to make preparations to stand the 
enemy, with the assistance of the Most High." The 
i.^ 19.1 



The Germans in Colonkil Times 

next day he details his militar}' measures, the companies 
and beats into which he had divided tlie people, and 
also that " I sent privately for Mr. Kurtz, the Lutlieran 
minister, who came and gave a word of exhortation to 
the people and made a prayer suitable to the time." A 
few days after he writes hopefully : "I believe that 
people in general up here will fight I had two or 
three long beards in my company [alluding to the cus- 
tom of wearing beards as a distinctive mark of the 
peace sects] one a INIennonite, who declared he would 
live and die with his neighbors. He had a good gun 
witli him." But a few days, and he writes a "melan- 
choly account" of new outrages, " I must stand my 
ground," he says, with modest confidence, "or my 
neighbors will go away." Then he forwards petitions, 
stops on his way to Philadelphia to appeal for tlie poor 
refugees in Reading, and to recommend " a Mr. Christian 
Busse}', a doctor in this town ; a heart}^ and very wortliy 
person, has neither wife nor child, and will do all he 
can," — which also the valiant doctor did, being a very 
active officer in frontier defence, along with such Ger- 
mans as Weitzel, Arndt, and Wetterholt. 

The last man named believed himself to be "kugel- 
fest," or magically safe from bullets, but was killed in a 
tavern where he was passing the night, b)' Indians ex- 
asperated through the false dealing of one of his 
worthless officers, — a piteous fate for a brave and hon- 
orable man. 

Many of the German ministers preached and prayed 
"suitably to the times," — we find exhortations to enlist 
in defence of the province delivered in Lischy's pulpit 
in York County ; and Roth, a minister of Northampton 

194 



Conratl Weiser and the Frontier Wars 

Town, writes that, *' as I was preaching, the people came 
in such numbers that I was obhgcd to quit my ser- 
mon" and proceed to organize a mihtia company, and 
send for " fifty guns, one hundred pounds of powder," 
and other strengthening of the secular arm. 

The German frontiersmen were as well inclined as the 
oftener praised Scotch-Irish, to " play the man for their 
people." Sometimes they built a blockhouse, such as 
Kellar's near Wind Gap, and garrisoned it themselves, 
sheltering there eveiy night during the harassed winter 
of 1757-58. Sometimes they built cellars of refuge, 
and on the door of one of them, the Ulrich fort, was 
the rude but terribly appropriate verse ; 

"So oft die Thiir den Angel wendt, 
An deinen Tod, O Mensch, gedenk. — 1751." 

" Whene'er this door its hinge doth turn. 
The nearness of thy death then learn." 

The Zellers fort near Lebanon was built, under the 
superintendence of a woman, Christine Zellers, by 
negro slaves ; and the same woman, once being alone 
in the fort and seeing some Indians prowling about, 
stationed herself at a cellar window with an axe, and 
killed three, as they successively put their heads in to 
reconnoitre. It was upon the frontier of Lebanon 
County that Regina Hartman and her sister were cap- 
tured ; but this pathetic tale belongs rather to the history 
of Bouquet's treaty of Muskingum. 

Muhlenberg has preserved us the sad story of tl\e ^^|L 
massacre of some of his parishioners, the Reichels- 
dorfer family, who had purchased land on the frontiers ^ 

of Berks County, but abandoned it when the war with 

19"; 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

the Indians broke out. The father and two daughters 
had gone out to this plantation to bring in some wheat ; 
the girls were naturally impressed with their danger, 
and on the evening before their intended return to the 
settlements they spoke of a presentiment of approach- 
ing death, and sang with their father the familiar funeral 
hymn, " Wer weiss wie nahe mir mein Ende ?" — " Who 
knows how near my end may be ?" On the next day 
the father, while putting the horses to the wagon to take 
them home, was suddenly attacked by Indians. Giving 
himself up for dead, he ejaculated, " Lord Jesus, I am 
thine, living and dying," and the savages, awed by the 
sacred name, which they recognized, paused for a mo- 
ment. Reichelsdorfer rushed through the woods to the 
nearest house for help, but when he arrived there he 
heard the Indians at their murderous work. Running 
back, he discovered his house in ashes, the body of one 
of his daughters consumed ; but the other, though 
scalped and mangled by the tomahawk, was still alive, 
told him " all the circumstances of the dreadful scene,*' 
and then begged him to stoop that " she might give him 
a parting kiss, and then go to her dear Saviour." 

But to return to Weiser, whom we find in 1756 post- 
ing soldiers, attending councils, and sending troops to 
protect harvesters. Armstrong's capture of Kittaning 
gave the people rest from their enemies this year, but 
in 1757 the same frightful alarms recur. Weiser 
attended a council at Easton, in July, and remarks 
cheerfully that "the Indians are altogether good- 
humored, and Teedyuscing [the mighty Delaware chief] 
behaves very well, and I have not seen him quite drunk 
since I came to this town." But in October he must 

196 



Conrad Weiser and the Frontier Wars 

inform the Governor that " it is certain that the enemy 
are numerous on our frontiers, and the people are 
coming- away very fast ;" and a few days after, " It has 
now come so far that murder is committed almost every 
day ... so fly with my family I cannot do, I must 
stay if they all go ;" yet he was at this time " in a low 
state of health," — the beginning of his last sickness. 

But in the next year we find him collecting " fifty- 
six good, strong wagons" for General Forbes's expe- 
dition to Fort Duquesne, and wishing " May the Most 
High prosper our labor with success ;" and seeing the 
Governor discourteous in those ticklish times to a dele- 
gation of his Indian friends in Philadelphia, he writes 
with all his old-time vigor : 

" I will say that he does not act the part of a well- 
wisher to his majesty's people. You may let him know 
so. Here is my hand to my saying so. 
" I am, sir 
"A loyal subject and a well-wisher to my country, 

" Conrad Weiser." 

There passed a strong, heroic soul away when Con- 
rad Weiser was laid to rest on his farm at Womelsdorf, 
where the Indians came to mourn at his grave for many 
years after. "We are at a great loss," they said, pa- 
thetically, at one of the conferences at Easton, " we sit 
in darkness by the death of Conrad Weiser ; since his 
death we cannot so well understand each other." And, 
indeed, few white men have ever understood, not simply 
the Indian language, but the savage character, as did 
this friend and "comrade" and valiant fighter of the 
Indian. 

197 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

During the period of Weiser's faihng health, the pro- 
vincial authorities cast about them for some one to take 
his place in the negotiations with the savages, and in 
some way heard of the qualifications of Christian Fred- 
crick Post, who was accordingly charged with the diffi- 
cult and dangerous embassy to the tribes " on Ohio," 
which then meant the Allegheny affluent of the present 
stream as well. Post was a Moravian, and had been in 
the mission at Shekomeko, where he married a baptized 
Indian woman. At this time he was in Bethlehem, and 
on account of his friendly relations with the Indians, 
through his labors among them and his marriage into 
their tribe, it was thought that he might be able to per- 
suade the western Indians not to add their forays to the 
French endeavors to hold " New France" in America. 

He started in July; "proceeded as far as German- 
town, where I found all the Indians drunk," he says, 
calmly ; and after this hopeful beginning, decided to go 
by a more northerly route than the one usually followed, 
which was in general the subsequent National Road, as 
made by Braddock and afterwards by Forbes. Post con- 
cluded, as he expressed it, "to go through the inhabi- 
tants," or settled parts of the country ; but he writes, " It 
gave me great pain to observe many plantations deserted 
and laid waste, and I could not but reflect on the distress 
the poor owners must be drove to, who once lived in 
plenty, and I prayed the Lord to restore peace and 
prosperity to the distressed." 

His own distresses and dangers might have occupied 
a less unselfish mind ; he notes simply how his party 
"slept upon the side of the mountain without fire for fear 
of the enemy ;" how they "saw three scalps on a bush ; 

198 



Conrad Weiser and the Frontier Wars 

to one of them there remained some long, white hair ;" 
how "the wolves made a terrible music this night." 
They arrived at Kuskuskee, the Indian town about 
fifteen miles from Fort Duquesne, and after interminable 
negotiations and speeches, and a visit to the French 
fort, Post succeeded in " prevailing on the Indians to 
withdraw from the French interest." 

He started homeward, his Indian guides in great 
terror, for they knew that a party was out after them : 
using all their Indian craft, they eluded the pursuers, and 
arrived safely in Fort Augusta, now Sunbury. One of 
Post's guides afterwards informed the Moravian that he 
had sold his life to the French, but was unfortunately 
prevented from keeping his engagement to kill him, — a 
circumstance which does not seem to have astounded 
Post, nor much moved him. He possessed in full the 
courageous faithfulness of the Moravian missionary, 
and told the Indians, very simply, " If I die in the un- 
dertaking, it will be as much for the Indians as for the 
English. I am resolved to go forward, taking my life 
in my hands, as one ready to part with it for your 
good." 

So, in a few weeks. Post again plunged into the wil- 
derness to persuade his savage friends to keep quiet in 
their towns, and " in consequence thereof," he writes, 
proudly, " the French were obliged to abandon the 
whole Ohio Country to General Forbes after destroying 
with their own hands their strong fort of Duquesne." 
Post returned with the victorious army from what, as 
soon as he has heard of its capture from the French, he 
scrupulously calls "Pittsburg." He had his share of 
hardship, to which, as a soldier of the cross, he was as 

199 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

well inured as any of the military men about him. On 
December 25, he notes, "the people in the camp pre- 
pared for a Christmas frolic, but I kept Christmas in the 
woods by myself," — we may believe with many longing 
thoughts of the Christmas vigils and festivities of the 
Moravian Bethlehem ; it is good to know that he re- 
turned safely there, having rendered such brave service 
to the province and its people. 

We have seen how in North Carolina the Moravian 
brethren of the " Dutch Fort" offered a place of refuge 
to all the inhabitants of the frontier, entertaining 
refugees from as far as Virginia. It must have been 
only from the more southern portions of this province 
that the fort at Bethabara offered refuge, for we know 
that the settlers of the northerly part of the Valley of 
Virginia stood their ground through eleven years of 
savage and desolating warfare, gathering into the little 
groups of log cabins, dignified by the name of forts, 
whenever there was an alarm, and going out to their 
farming labors under guard when it could not be done 
in safety in any other way. The local annalists, Kerche- 
val and Doddridge, have preserved a most vivid and 
detailed picture of the life in these times of what was 
more commonly called, in the South, " Braddock's 
War," when the people were " forted," as the expression 
ran. We know that since the days of Jost Heit's " trek" 
to Winchester, twenty-five years before, this valley had 
been filled with German pioneers, and this agrees with 
the frequent occurrence of Teutonic names, more or 
less disguised, among those of the heroes of these stir- 
ring border tales, 

Doddridge describes a scene which must have found 



Conrad Weiser and the Frontier Wars 

its counterpart in many a German settler's cabin in 
those days. " I well remember, when a little boy, the 
family were sometimes waked at the dead of night by an 
express with a report that the Indians were at hand. The 
express came softly to the door or back window, and by a 
gentle tapping, waked the family ; this was easily done, 
as an habitual fear made us ever watchful and sensible 
to the slightest alarm. The whole family were instantly 
in motion, my father seized his gun, my mother waked 
and dressed the children as well as she could ; and being 
myself the oldest of the children, I had to take my 
share of the burthens to be carried to the fort. There 
was no possibility of catching a horse in the night to 
aid us in removing to the fort ; besides the little chil- 
dren, we caught up what articles of clothing and pro- 
visions we could get hold of in the dark, for we durst 
not light a candle or even stir the fire. All this was 
done with the utmost despatch and the silence of death ; 
the greatest care was taken not to waken the youngest 
child; to the rest it was enough to say 'Indian,' and 
not a whimper was heard afterwards. Thus it often 
happened that the whole number of families belonging 
to a fort, who were in the evening at their homes, were 
all in their little fortress before the dawn of the next 
morning. In the course of the next day, their house- 
hold furniture was brought in by parties of the men 
under arms." 

One German pioneer woman was not warned by such 
prosaic means as an "express;" she told her husband 
the night before an Indian attack that she could see the 
savages on the Massanutten Mountain, two miles away, 
around a fire cooking supper and preparing for their 

20I 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

dark night's work, but was laughed at as superstitious 
for her warning, which proved true the next day. 

These women were certainly not easily alarmed, nor 
did they lose their courage under the most frightful 
circumstances. Two families going to take refuge in a 
fort were attacked by the savages, and the husbands 
both killed at the first fire ; the newly made widows, 
seizing their dead husbands' guns, defended themselves 
and their orphans and brought them safely to the fort. 

The house of an aged Mennonite preacher was at- 
tacked, the old man shot dead in his door-way, and his 
sons also slaughtered ; his eldest daughter, Elizabeth, 
caught up her little sister in her arms, and shut herself 
in the barn ; her Indian pursuer running back to the 
house for live coals with which to set fire to her refuge 
and thus drive her out, the Mennonite girl slipped out, 
forded a river, and escaped safely to a neighbor's, clasp- 
ing tightly her little sister. 

One old German, George Sigler, was the sole guardian 
of a party of women and little children on their way to 
the fort at Woodstock, when they were attacked. After 
wounding one Indian, the old man clubbed his gun and 
fought with desperation. Meanwhile, the women and 
children made their escape safely to the fort. Sigler, 
wounded and bleeding, continued the fight till he 
dropped from loss of blood, having saved his helpless 
charges by the sacrifice of his own life. 

When the savages attacked and murdered the whole 
family of a man named Miller, save one little girl who 
escaped to warn the neighbors, the men who ran thither 
with their rifles at the first alarm found, on the threshold 
of the cabin which held the bleeding bodies of the 

202 



Conrad Weiser and the Frontier Wars 

murdered pioneers, a large German Bible ; the Indians 
had attempted to burn it, but the closely bound book 
had resisted the flame, and but a few pages were con- 
sumed ; this half-burnt and bloody relic is still pre- 
served. 

Some of these people were led away into captivity, 
and had to see their children and feeble ones slaughtered 
before their eyes when they could not keep up with 
their lithe, vigorous captors. Yet some captives taken 
young and adopted into the tribe were happy to re- 
main among the Indians : of these were such men as 
Lewis Bingaman, who, captured when a boy near New 
Germantown, lived to be a great chief among his 
adopted people. Some years after Indian outrages had 
ceased, and the border had rest from its enemies, a 
worthless young white man committed the unprovoked 
murder of an Indian. Decoying the young chief away 
on pretence of hunting, he got behind him, shot him, 
robbed him of his rifle, hunting dress, and ornaments, 
and came home to boast of his cowardly deed. A few 
days after a German of the neighborhood met Lewis 
Bingaman, the German boy who had become an Indian 
warrior. Bingaman told him that he had come in at 
the head of thirty warriors to revenge the murder of 
his comrade, and urged him not to warn the murderer, 
for if the savage revenge was balked, they would exer- 
cise it, Indian fashion, upon all the whites, not except- 
ing women and children. The German kept silence, 
thinking the English murderer deserved his punishment. 
Bingaman decoyed him into the Massanutten Mountain 
on the same pretext which he had used to his Indian 
victim, and the murderer was never seen again. His 

203 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

fate in the revengeful hands of the white savage may 
be best left to the imagination. 

The settlements of the Palatines in Western New 
York, which had made the Mohawk a German stream 
for fort}' miles of its course, were naturally exposed to 
the inroads of the Indians, yet it was not their warlike 
neighbors, the Six Nations, who took the initiative in 
the attack. Weiser's arguments and representations to 
his "comrades" of the "Six Council Fires" had some 
effect, and the confederacy took part only half-heartedh- 
and partially in the French and Indian War. When 
Onontio sent them ambassadors, money, and a com- 
mander, they went upon the war-patli with savage alac- 
rity', but they had no further plan tlian the Indian one 
of a foray ; after dealing one of their terrible stealthy 
blows they would retire, quarrel over the spoil, and 
wait to see whether Onas or Onontio * would offer them 
the best terms, to decide whether it should be peace or 
war. 

But when they took up the hatchet they were, if un- 
reliable, ver}' terrible allies, and so the French Captain 
Belletre found them when he came in 1/57 to lead the 
Indians against the little settlement of German Flats 
(now called Herkimer, after its most prominent man, 
and its valiant defender at this and other times of stress). 
Nicholas Herkimer was the son of a Palatine emi- 
grant, the lieutenant of the local militia, the possessor 
of a large, fine, and (best of all) defensible house, which 
served as a fort to tlie vicinity ; what was most im- 



* " Onas" was the Indian name for Mr. Penn and hence for the Penn- 
sylvania government, and " Onontio" their designation for the French. 

204 



Conmd Weiscr and the Frontier Wars 

portant, he was a man of inexhaustible courage and 
resource, a tower of strength to the neighborhood. 

Belletre's foray took the httle settlement entirely by 
surprise. The news of an intended French attack, 
given them by a friendly Indian, was incredible to the 
settlers of German Flats, who, like most of their coun- 
trymen, had lived in friendship with their wild neighbors. 
Belletre fell upon them on a dark November night ; his 
Indians butchered and scalped nearly half the people — 
men, women, and children indiscriminately — after a short 
but brave resistance, and took more than one hundred 
prisoners with him to Canada, besides a quantity of 
plunder, which, although the French captain exag- 
gerated it, was really quite large, for the Palatines were 
known to be rich for frontier farmers. Herkimer's fort 
they did not venture to attack. 

In the next spring the French returned, but found 
that Nicholas Herkimer had made such effective prepa- 
rations for defence that they inflicted less damage and 
terror than in their previous attempt. They fell upon a 
company of settlers on their way under escort of 
Herkimer's militia to a place of safety, but were beaten 
off by the guards ; the settlement suffered again, but 
again Herkimer's fortified house was untouched. 

With the conclusion of peace, the Germans of the 
Mohawk country held a festival of thanksgiving — a sort of 
Peace Jubilee — in their churches, from the unfortunate 
village of German Flats to the old seats of the Palatines 
at Schoharie and the Camps ; and we may be sure it 
was a heartfelt thanksgiving that was offered up by the 
pioneers. 



205 



CHAPTER XIX 

THE " ROYAL AMERICAN'" REGIMENT 

The military qualities of the German frontiersmen 
were so distinguished that they attracted the attention 
of the British Parliament, which in 1755, the year of 
Braddock's defeat, ordered a regiment raised among the 
German and Swiss settiers of Maryland and Pennsyl- 
vania. "As they were all zealous Protestants and, in 
general, strong, hardy men, accustomed to the climate, 
it was judged that a regiment of good and faithful 
soldiers might be raised out of them, particularly proper 
to oppose the French ; but to th's end it w^as necessary' 
to appoint some officers who understood militarj' disci- 
pline, and could speak the German language." Pro- 
ceeding on this principle, by the advice of tlie English 
minister to the Low Countries, some Swiss officers in 
the service of the Dutch republic were selected, and, 
among others, Henry Bouquet was made lieutenant- 
colonel of the new organization. 

The selection was marvellously fortunate. Bouquet 
was a native of Berne, a man of unusual resourcefulness, 
courage, and ability, of high principles and cultivated 
mind, the greatest possible antithesis to the British soldier 
of the tj'pe of Braddock, or Loudon, Bouquet's titular su- 
perior. In the regiment were enrolled such German offi- 
cers as Weissenfels, subsequently distinguished in the 
Continental army, and we have noted that the Rev. 

206 



The " Royal American" Regiment 

Michael Schlatter found a place in it as chaplain after 
the termination of his ministerial work in Philadelphia. 

Bouquet came to America in 1756, and spent that 
winter in Philadelphia. He made friends among the 
best people of the town, and a feeling, perhaps tenderer 
than friendship, arose between him and a Philadelphia 
girl, the grand daughter of Chief-Justice Shippen, Miss 
Anne Willing, When in the next summer the Royal 
Americans formed part of Forbes's victorious forces at 
the taking of Fort Duquesne, it is to this "Dear Nancy" 
that Bouquet "has the satisfaction to announce the 
agreeable news of the conquest of this terrible fort. 
The French," he cries, exultantly, "seized with a panic 
at our approach, have destroyed themselves — that nest 
of pirates which has so long harbored the murderers and 
destructors of our people. The glory of our success 
must, after God, be allowed to our General, who kept 
such a number of Indians idle and procured a peace 
from those inveterate enemies, more necessary and 
beneficial than the driving of the French from the 
Ohio." 

We know that the young Swiss's generous enthusiasm 
for his commander, though amply justified, was a little 
misplaced, and that it was the self-sacrificing Moravian 
missionary Post whose efforts kept the Indians quiet. 
After Forbes's return to Philadelphia and death. Bouquet 
succeeded to the command of the new Fort Pitt, and 
his men built the block-house which is the only exist- 
ing remnant of the fort, and proudly placed upon it the 
name of their honored commander. 

For the next seven years the Germans of the new 
regiment had the distasteful task of performing garrison 

207 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

duty in the long chain of scattered forts, or block-houses, 
which extended from Philadelphia to Fort Pitt, San- 
dusky, and Detroit; they were " military' hermits" in the 
recesses of the forest, and the commander and his men 
found the isolation of the frontier very hard to bear. 
Near Fort Ligonier, where Bouquet was stationed, there 
was a German family, the Byerlys ; the wife was a Swiss 
woman, Beatrice Gulden, from Bouquet's native canton 
of Berne, and with his countrywoman the Swiss officer 
would talk amid the wilds of Western Pennsylvania of 
their far-away mountain home. 

Some battalions of the regiment were more fortunate, 
if it can be said to be fortune which sent some of them 
to participate in the campaign of Acadia, with its heart- 
less deportation of the poor people ; others were part 
of the expedition against Crown Point, and the mere 
fact that they held their ground in their rude intrench- 
ment, defeating the Frenchmen by their unerring bor- 
derers' rifles, made it, in the words of Parkman, " an 
achievement of arms, which in that day of failures was 
greeted both in England and America as a signal vic- 
tory." A battalion of the Royal Americans was also 
among the unhappy garrison of Fort William Henry, 
which having won by brave defence a capitulation with 
the honors of war, was assailed by Montcalm's Indians, 
and its members shot and scalped without mercy. In 
1758 these German soldiers helped to take Louisburg 
from the French ; in the next year they were with Pri- 
deaux at the taking of Niagara, and — far prouder deed — 
they were with Wolfe at Quebec. In the first assault at 
Montmorency **the ill-timed impetuosity of the Royal 
Americans proved the ruin of the plan ;" but their gallant 

208 



The " Royal American" Regiment 

leader must have overlooked a fault so soldierly, for it is 
from Quebec that the regiment dates the right to its 
present motto, — "■cclcr ct audax.'" It was these Ger- 
man soldiers who saw what the dying French general 
rejoiced that he would not live to see, — the surrender of 
Quebec ; and they were among the first English gar- 
risons of Canada, when, in the next year, that province 
finally surrendered to the English. Forerunners of the 
English-speaking race everywhere, we find them in 1762 
in Havana, where to-day other American regiments, not 
royal, form the garrison of that Morro Castle which the 
English built during their occupation of Cuba at this 
time. 

It was the year after (1763) that there burst upon the 
western country the fearful surprise of Pontiac's con- 
spiracy. The military hermits in their little posts were 
cut off, killed, or captured. At Fort Bedford a garrison 
of t^velve Royal Americans held the forest post. " I 
should be very glad," wrote the commandant, guardedly, 
" to see some troops come to my assistance. A fort 
with five bastions cannot be guarded, much less de- 
fended, with twelve men, but I hope God will protect 
us." The small garrison of Fort Le Boeuf — a dozen 
men, six of whose names show their German descent — 
held their little fort until it was set on fire by burn- 
ing arrows, and then cut their way out and marvellously 
escaped to Fort Pitt. Fort Pitt, gallantly held by 
Ecuyer, of the Royal Americans, was the only western 
post remaining except the besieged Detroit. 

Bouquet, who was in Philadelphia, promptly started 
for the relief of these hard-pressed garrisons. He had 
but a handful of men, described in terms now sadly 
14 209 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

familiar to us, as "just landed from the West Indies in 
a very emaciated condition." But their leader's indomi- 
table courage triumphed over everj'thing. He took his 
little handful of yellow-faced invalids, plunged into the 
wilderness, reached and relieved Bedford, then Ligonier, 
and pressed on to Fort Pitt 

At a place (which Bouquet called Edge Hill, but 
which is commonly known as Bushy Run) about twenty- 
six miles from the fort he was suddenly attacked by 
Indians, as Braddock had been. But they had a very 
different man to deal with from that brave and pig- 
headed martinet. He knew and did not despise the 
Indian methods of warfare, but neither was he terrified 
by them. He was friendly with the savages, having, it 
is said, adopted an Indian boy, but he understood per- 
fectly how to meet the new conditions of war in the 
woods by the use of frontiersmen's methods, and the 
suggestions in Smith's account of his campaign, " how 
to form and discipline a corps of rangers," which prob- 
ably emanated from Bouquet himself, show how admirable 
an Indian fighter he was. 

Forming a rude fortification with wagons and flour- 
bags, in which shelter he put the wounded, Bouquet sus- 
tained all the afternoon a galling attack from yelling, abu- 
sive, invisible savages ; yet they could not drive him from 
his position. That night he wrote to his general, Amherst, 
the letter of a brave man in the very presence of death. 
"We expect to begin at daybreak. Whatever our fate 
may be, I thought it necessary to give your Excellency 
this early information that you may at all events take 
such measures as you think proper with the provinces 
for their own safety and for the relief of Fort Pitt. The 



The " Royal American" Regiment 

situation of the wounded is truly deplorable. The con- 
duct of the officers is much above my praises." 

But on that dreaded next day Bouquet executed a 
clever ruse de guerre, by which he drew the Indians 
into a trap and completely defeated them ; then de- 
stroying the provisions, etc., which his weakened force 
could no longer carry, he made litters for the wounded, 
and brought his command safely into Fort Pitt. The 
savages were too thoroughly cowed by their overwhelm- 
ing defeat by this handful of white men in the savages' 
chosen fighting-ground of the forest to attempt any- 
thing against Fort Pitt. Pontiac's war was ended and 
the frontiers were safe. 

The wild, enthusiastic gratitude which Bouquet's 
wonderful fight evoked has almost passed from knowl- 
edge now ; few, even of those who are acquainted with 
the dismal story of Braddock's ambuscade and defeat, 
which brought on the horrors of the French and Indian 
War, know of Bouquet's ambuscade and victory, which 
crushed Pontiac's conspiracy and gave Eastern Pennsyl- 
vania and Virginia final rest from savage warfare. 
Bouquet's name and fame are alike overlaid with dust. 
Yet he and his regiment of Germans acted a brave part 
in their time, and have deserved better of their country 
than the oblivion which has fallen upon them. 

The Swiss colonel received the thanks of the pro- 
vincial legislatures of Pennsylvania and Virginia. He 
was promoted to a brigadier-generalship. He was 
naturalized, evidently expecting to settle upon the tract 
quaintly called " Long Meadow enlarged," which he 
had bought among the German settlements of Frederick 
County, Maryland. One of his captains writes him from 

211 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

Lancaster of the general joy over his honors : " You 
can scarcely imagine how this place rings with the news 
of your promotion, for the townspeople and German 
farmers stop us in the street to ask if it is true that 
the King has made Colonel Bouquet a General : and 
when they are told it is true, they march off with great 
joy. So you see the old proverb is wrong for once 
which says that he that prospers is envied, for sure I 
am that all the people are more pleased with the news 
of your promotion than they would be if the govern- 
ment would take off the stamp dut}^," — certainly a 
strong comparison, when we remember that the captain 
alluded to the hated Stamp Act. 

Bouquet was not the man to grow slothful in his 
honors. His humanity and his soldierly sagacity were 
alike interested in forcing the Indians to restore the 
prisoners whom they had taken during the long course 
of those nine years of border hostilities. So by a 
daring yet well-guarded march to the Indian towns on 
the Muskingum, and by a mingling of severity and 
adroitness, he induced the Indians to deliver up their 
white captives, who were brought to Carlisle for identi- 
fication and return to their homes. Among the re- 
deemed prisoners was that Regina Hartman whose true 
story, told simply by Muhlenberg, is far more affecting 
than in its dressed-up form of fiction. 

As a little nine-year-old child upon the frontiers of 
Lebanon County, her father had taught her the sweet 
hymns of the Fatherland. The Indians fell upon their 
cabin while the mother and one son were away at mill, 
murdered the father and son at home, and took the little 
girls, Barbara and Regina, captive. The description of 



The " Royal American" Regiment 

the long march through the rough and pathless wilder- 
ness with another strange child tied upon her back, the 
separation from her sister, the captivity to an " old she- 
wolf" of an Indian who forced the German child into 
the wintry woods for firewood and food from roots and 
tree-bark, the hunger, cold, and nakedness, — all have the 
affecting strength of truth. At first the poor child was 
stupefied by her misery ; then she began to recollect the 
teachings of her pious home, and often, taking her little 
nursling with her, the two children would kneel in the 
lonely woods, repeating the hymns and prayers which 
Regina had learnt. So nine years passed ; then " the 
wise and brave Colonel Bouquet" freed them and 
brought them to Carlisle, whither all those who had lost 
relatives or friends by Indian captivity were bidden to 
come and identify them. But no one knew the eighteen- 
year-old maiden, clad in the rude dress which the kindly 
soldiers of Fort Pitt had given from their own poor 
wardrobes. As Regina and her little foster-child stood 
bewildered, an old widowed woman in the crowd began 
to repeat the hymn of the wilderness : 

" Allein und doch nicht ganz alleine, 

Bin ich in meiner Einsamkeit, 
Denn wie ich ganz verlassen scheine, 

Vertreibt mir Jesus selbst die Zeit. 
Ich bin bei Ihm und Er bei mir, 
Ich komm mir gar nicht einsam fiir." 

" Alone yet not alone am I, 

Though in this solitude so drear, 
I feel my Jesus always nigh, 

He comes my lonely hours to cheer ; 
I am with him and he with me, 
I cannot solitary be." 
213 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

Regina sprang out from the line, repeated the hymn and 
her German prayers, with which she had so often solaced 
her slavery in the Indian camp, and then threw herself 
upon her old mother's neck. Soon after she and her 
mother visited Muhlenberg ; Regina had insisted that 
her hymn told her of a book through which God spoke 
with men, and she wished to have it. When Muhlen- 
berg gave her a Bible and desired her to tr}' and read 
something from it, she opened it at a passage in Tobit 
and read " in a clearly beautiful and moving manner :" 
' ' When he was rriade captive . . . even in his captivity, 
(he) forsook not the way of truth." As no one came 
to claim the little foster-child, it was thought that her 
parents had been murdered by the savages when she 
was taken, so the poor widow and her recovered child 
took her into their own humble home. It is sad to say 
that the other daughter, Barbara, was never restored. 

Shortly after his victorious return from the West, 
General Bouquet was ordered to Pensacola, where, in 
the midst of life, with "honor, love, obedience, troops 
of friends," he fell a victim to fever, and died within 
nine days after reaching his station. He left his plan- 
tation in Maryland to the brother of his "dear Nancy." 
The very place of his burial has been destroyed. Thus 
perished in his prime a gallant, noble, and talented man ; 
but it was not until he had done his work in freeing the 
frontiers from the terrors of Indian invasion with the aid 
of his gallant Germans of the " Royal American Regi- 
ment." 



214 



CHAPTER XX 



THE REDEMPTION ERS 



For some years a system had been growing up for 
enabling poor immigrants to pay their passage by 
"serving" — as it was called — for a certain length of 
time in the new land, thus giving their labor in exchange 
for their passage money. Such arrangements we find 
occasionally from about the date of the founding of 
Germantown ; but^.the class of " redemptioners," as they! 
were known to the law, did not become large enough to' 
attract notice until the middle of the eighteenth century. 1 

When the first large bodies of immigrants arrived in 
Pennsylvania they excited the fears of the provincial 
authorities, and laws were passed requiring them to have 
their names registered and to take the oath of allegiance. 
By compliance with this law, the names of thirty thou- 
sand German, Swiss, and other European emigrants 
have been preserved for the information of their de- 
scendants, although, owing to the adoption by the Eng- 
lish clerks of the maxim that " anything would do for 
the name of a Dutchman," the appellations are wonder- 
fully disguised and disfigured. 

After several outbreaks of alarm on the part of the 
English government lest the Germans should prove bad 
citizens, it was recognized that the superior prosperity 
of Pennsylvania was owing largely to their thrift and 
industry ; that they were steady, hard-working laborers, 

215 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

enterprising merchants, well-trained artisans, and, on 
occasion, good fighters ; and the provinces generally 
tried to stimulate rather than discourage the Teutonic 
influx. 

Unfortunately, the management of the emigration fell 
largely into the hands of conscienceless speculators, of 
whom Waldo, of Maine, the Zauberbiihlers, of South 
Carolina, and Livingston, of New York, are the types. 
In Pennsylvania, on the contrary, there was no organized 
attempt to exploit the German immigration, and so it 
took its way towards Penn's province in overwhelming 
preponderance. 

The opportunity to make money out of them was too 
good to be lost, and if the Quakers would not embrace 
it, a few ship-captains in Rotterdam did. The Sted- 
mans, an English firm owning many of the vessels which 
sailed from the ports of the Low Countries, obtained a 
bad eminence in the traffic, which by the middle of the 
century rivalled the horrors of the slave-trade in its 
callous cruelty. Of this we have much testimony, and 
from eye-witnesses. 

Although the emigration agents pictured the journey 
as an easy and cheap one, the poor pilgrims found it in 
reality to cost far more than had been estimated. The 
long journey down the Rhine, the passing of its innu- 
merable custom-houses, and the (often prearranged) de- 
tention at Rotterdam until the ship sailed, were designed 
to exhaust their means and leave them in debt to the 
shippers. The poor people, with German thrift, 
brought their great chests on board filled with dried 
fruits, bacon, liquor, and medicines, as well as clothing 
and money. But these were intentionally stowed in 

216 



The Redemptloners 

other vessels, so that the emigrants, deprived of their 
own provisions, were compelled to buy them from the 
captain, thus increasing their debt. On these crowded, 
foul ships, during the long voyage (three months was 
the usual time), with poor and insufficient food, the 
death-rate was frightful. In the years 1750 and 1755 
Saur notes that two thousand corpses were thrown into 
the sea. On the ship on which Heinrich Keppele, the 
first president of the German Society, emigrated, two 
hundred and fifty persons died. 

Gottlieb Mittelberger, a school-master and organist of 
Wiirtemberg, came over in 1750, and on his return, 
after living four years in New Providence, Pennsylvania, 
he wrote an account of his travels. He says "the most 
important occasion for publishing this little book was the 
wretched and grievous condition of those who travel 
from Germany to this new land and the outrageous and 
merciless proceeding of the Dutch man-dealers and 
their man-stealing emissaries, — I mean the so-called 
Newlanders." He, as well as Muhlenberg, describes 
the tactics of these detested traffickers, how they delude 
the poor Germans with glowing descriptions of the 
" Elysian fields which seed themselves without toil or 
trouble," and tell the people "he that goes as a servant 
becomes a master, as a maid becomes ' your ladyship ;' 
the peasant is a nobleman, the artisan a baron." Mit- 
telberger declares that his countrymen in Pennsylvania 
implored him " with tears and uplifted hands to make 
this misery and sorrow known in Germany, so that not 
only the common people, but even princes and lords, 
might learn how they had fared, to prevent other inno- 
cent souls from leaving their fatherland, persuaded 

217 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

thereto by the Newlanders, and from being sold into a 
like slavery." 

What this slavery is he goes on to describe: "The 
sale of human beings on the ship is carried on thus : 
every day Englishmen, Dutchmen, and High German 
people come from the city of Philadelphia and other 
places, go on board the newly arrived ship, and select 
among the healthy persons such as they deem suitable 
for their business, and bargain with them how long they 
will serve for their passage money. When they have 
come to an agreement, adult people bind themselves in 
writing to serve three, four, five, or six years for the 
amount due from them, according to their strength and 
age. But very young people must serve until they are 
twenty-one years old. When one has served his term 
he is entitled to a new suit of clothes at parting," — called 
the "fi'eedom suit," — "and if it has been so stipulated, 
a man gets in addition a horse, a woman a cow." We 
can see that to young, strong, single persons the ar- 
rangement would be a favorable one, enabling them to 
learn the ways of the new country and to be assured 
of a support during their first years in the unfamiliar 
surroundings. 

But Muhlenberg, speaking from the stand-point of a 
clergyman often appealed to by the distressed, gives a 
sad picture of the fate of those unable to serve. "Old 
married people, widows, and the feeble no one will have. 
If they have healthy children, the freight of the old 
people is put upon them, and the children must serve 
the longer, are the harder to sell, and are scattered far 
from one another ; see their old parents and their 
brothers and sisters seldom or never, and forget their 

218 



The Redemptioners 

mother tongue. The old people, meanwhile, freed in 
such wise from the ship, are poor, naked, and distressed, 
look as tho' they had come from the grave, go about 
in the town begging from the Germans, — for the Eng- 
lish mostly shut their doors upon them, fearing infection." 

And the organist Mittelberger goes on to describe 
the conditions of life in Pennsylvania in homely but vig- 
orous words : " Work and labor in this new and wild 
land are very hard and many a one, who came here in 
his old age, must work hard to his end for his bread. 
Work here mostly consists in felling oak trees and as 
they say here ' clearing' large tracts of forest. . . . 
Stumps of oak trees are in America certainly as hard as 
in Germany. . . . People are very foolish if they be- 
lieve that roasted pigeons will fly into their mouths in 
America without their working for them." 

He returns again and again to the lies and deceptions 
of the Newlanders, of which he had had personal ex- 
perience. " When these men-thieves persuade persons of 
rank such as nobles, learned or skilful persons, who cannot 
pay their passage and cannot give security, these are 
treated just like ordinary poor persons. And when they 
are released at last from the ship they must serve their 
lords and masters, by whom they have been bought, like 
common day laborers. Their rank, skill and learning 
avails them nothing, for here none but laborers and me- 
chanics are wanted. But the worst is that such people, 
who are not accustomed to work, are treated to blows and 
cuffs like cattle till they have learnt the hard work. Many 
a one, on finding himself thus shamefully deceived has 
shortened his own life." The " Hallesche Nachrichten" 
casually mentions the finding of a suicide's body : " He 

219 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

arrived a few days since from London or Amsterdam, 
could not pay his passage and probably was too proud 
to serve for a time, which it is suspected was the 
cause of his suicide." Mittelberger mentions the case 
of a noble lady who, with her two daughters and a 
son, came to Philadelphia, intrusting her means to a 
Newlander : "this villian remained behind with the 
money ; in consequence of which this lady found her- 
self in such want and distress that her two daughters 
were compelled to serve. In the following spring this 
poor lady sent her son to Holland to search for the em- 
bezzler of her money ; but nothing had been heard of 
him as yet, and it was even rumored that the young 
gentleman had died during his voyage." And we find 
Pastor Kunze imparting to the Fathers in Halle " an 
idea which had occurred to him" of a way to obtain an 
assistant pastor as follows : " If I had say ;(^20 I would 
buy the first German student who came to these shores 
owing his freight, put him in my upstairs room, begin 
a little Latin school, teach in the mornings myself and 
let my servant teach the rest of the time and be paid 
by a small fee. " On this wise the benevolent and busi- 
ness-like clergyman became possessed of a collegian, 
out of whom he made, in course of time, a minister. 

That persons of the better and upper classes were 
not infrequently among the redemptioners may be the 
reason why no possible stigma attached to the condition ; 
although other classes of the population, the negro 
slaves and the convict servants, approached them in 
condition, tJicy were regarded as degraded, while the 
redemptioners soon paid their debts, bought land for 
themselves, and were on an equality with the rest of the 



The Redemptioners 

emigrants who had had enough money on their arrival 
to pay their passage. The women among the redemp- 
tioners very often married their masters or masters' sons ; 
the traditions of almost every Pennsylvania German 
family contain examples of this. One of the signers of 
the Declaration of Independence, Charles Thornton, 
had been a redemptioner, as were the parents of the 
Revolutionary general, Sullivan. These must have been 
among the Irish redemptioners, for this nationality sup- 
plied a few as well as the German. Many members of 
the Virginia House of Burgesses had been "servants" 
before they ruled others as legislators. The condition 
is much more repugnant to our ideas of personal liberty 
than it was to those of our forefathers, a"^ are also the 
tone and expression of the numerous advertisements 
announcing the arrival of emigrant ships, and offering 
servants for sale. 

Here are specimens: "The ship Boston, Mathew 
Carr, Master, is to-day arrived from Rotterdam with 
several hundred Germans, among whom are all sorts of 
artisans, day laborers, and young persons, both men 
and women as well as boys and girls. Those who are 
desirous of providing themselves with such persons, are 
desired to communicate with David Rundle, Front 
Street." The people are described and praised in terms 
of salable commodities ; they are "fresh and healthy;" 
there are "nice children" in another load; the trades 
and abilities of the emigrants are exhaustively catalogued. 
In the advertisements of the sale of service, it was really 
the service, not the person of the servants, that was 
offered, but the advertisers were by no means careful 
to avoid this expression. Miller's " Staatsbote," a year 

221 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

after the repeal of the Stamp Act, contains the follow- 
ing : " For sale, the time of a German bound girl. She 
is a strong, fresh and healthy person, not more than 
twenty-five years old, came into the country last autumn 
and is sold for no fault, but because she does not suit 
the service she is in. She is acquainted with all kinds 
of farm work, would probably be good in a tavern. 
She has still five years to serve." Another is " a pious 
and Godfearing girl with a special fondness for outdoor 
work." A succinct notice offers "A Dutch apprentice 
lad ; can work well." One trusts that servants of such 
virtues and abilities found masters as good. But this 
was, as Muhlenberg says, "according to the character- 
istics of the buyers and what the providence or per- 
mission of God has decreed." 

It is easy to see how the whole system, both of trans- 
portation and serving, gave abundant opportunity for 
dishonest and cruel treatment The Germans resident 
in Philadelphia made several endeavors to have some 
sort of inspection of vessels established, but the gover- 
nor was unwilling to interfere with the profit of the 
rich and unscrupulous European merchants ; it was 
alleged that he had some pecuniaiy interest in not dis- 
turbing the traffic. 

At length, in 1764, a particularly shocking instance 
of sickness and need on board the ships which arrived 
in the autumn of that }'ear was brought to the notice 
of the public through a letter in the "Staatsbote," prob- 
ably written by Pastor Helmuth. He describes tlie 
pest-house as " a veritable Tophet, a land of the living 
dead, a vault full of living corpses, where nothing but 
their sicfhs and tears showed that the souls were still in 



The Redemptioners 

their wasted bodies. The stench and the revulsion of 
body as well as mind, yes the feelings of humanity, 
forbade me to carry out my intention of speaking or 
praying with them, not to mention that for this there 
was neither place nor opportunity. . . . God, who has 
promised eternal life to those who feed Him in those 
who are an-hungered, clothe Him in the naked and 
visit Him in the sick, will incline the hearts of those 
who have the means, to take this opportunity of show- 
ing that they are not unworthy of temporal and eternal 
eoods." The editor of the " Staatsbote" adds the infor- 
mation that before this appeal was printed, money, 
clothing, and food had been spontaneously sent to the 
sufferers. 

The generous Germans who had given this help in- 
formally saw the great need of an organization of 
persons which should make it its business to look 
after their distressed fellow-countrymen, and so, "on 
Second Christmas, 1764, in the Lutheran schoolhousc 
in Cherry Street," was formed the " Deutsche Gesell- 
schaft," still existing in an honorable and vigorous old 
age. The meeting arranged for the relief of such cases 
of destitution among their country-people as might 
occur, and for protection of the redemptioners in making 
their contracts, and sent a translation of their rules and 
a petition against the abuses suffered by the German 
emigrants to Governor John Penn, and then, in the 
words always used at the end of the minutes, " the 
Society parted from each other in love and friendship." 

In 1765 a law was passed by the Assembly doing 
away with many of the abuses, modifying others, and 
in general so bettering the lot of the poor emigrants 

223 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

that the Society was justified in reprinting it as a 
pamphlet, with the proud title, "The First Fruits of the 
German Society." And through the years we find in 
the records of the Society homely notes of how it 
interfered to protect a little German boy from an un- 
kind master, how the aged president of the Society went 
in person to deal with the oppressors of a widow, how 
they paid a German woman "to cure the hand" of an 
emigrant, furnished bedding and clothing, food and medi- 
icine for the living, and buried the dead. 

The example of the Germans in Philadelphia was 
followed by those in other cities, and German societies 
were formed in New York, Baltimore, and Charleston. 
In all these cities were many Germans, and the same 
conditions obtained to some degree. 

In the province of New York we hear little of re- 
demptioners ; yet we occasionally meet with allusions 
which prove that the relation was not unknown there, 
although it was not so frequent as in Pennsylvania. 
One of these is the story of Lady Johnson, the wife of 
the powerful Indian agent in the Mohawk Valley. She 
was a redemptioner, Catharine Weissenfels, serving in 
the family of two brothers named Phillips. Johnson, 
not then Sir William, saw the blooming, pretty German 
girl, and fell in love with her. A neighbor, presently 
inquiring of one of the Phillips brothers what had 
become of their maid, was told, "Johnson, the d — d 
Irishman, came the other day and threatened to horse- 
whip me and steal her if I would not sell her. I 
thought ^"5 better than a flogging and took it, and 
he's got the gal." Thus Catharine Weissenfels passed 
to Johnson. She bore him three children ; for the Ger- 

224 



The Redcmptioners 

man girl was the mother of his heir, Sir John, and her 
daughters were married to General Clause and to Sir 
William's nephew, Sir Guy. When she lay dying of 
consumption she begged him to marry her, and at 
least legitimate her children ; bolstered up on her 
death-bed the ceremony was performed, and so for a 
few days the dying Palatine woman was Lady Johnson 
in the eyes of the church and the world. Perhaps her 
lord's roving heart returned to her in his last days, for 
he willed to be buried " beside his beloved wife Cath- 
arine," and when, late in the nineteenth century, his dust 
was disturbed there was found among it a slender gold 
ring, bearing the date of their belated marriage, which 
he had taken from Catharine's dead finger. 

The name of one New York redemptioner has be- 
come famous in later times as the first man to resist 
successfully the endeavors of a royal governor to curb 
the freedom of the press. One of the poor little Pala- 
tine children who was brought a penniless orphan to the 
province of New York in 1710 was John Peter Zenger, 
the thirteen-year-old son of Magdalena Zenger, a Palatine 
widow. As we know. Governor Hunter took those 
children and apprenticed them to citizens of the province 
without much regard to the feelings or desires of the 
poor families to which they belonged ; so Weiscr's two 
sons were taken from him and given first to one master 
and then to another, until little Frederick died shortly 
after his apprenticeship. 

But the young Zenger found a good master, kind and 
upright ; he was given into the hands of William Brad- 
ford, the printer, and from him learned not only the art 
and mystery of typography, but the higher art of living 
IS 225 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

a brave and upright hfe. After the Palatine boy's term 
of apprenticeship was over, he became his master's 
partner ; but in 1733 he set up a press, and in the same 
year a paper of his own. 

This paper was designed to support the people's side 
in the disputes between the royal governor and his 
loving subjects. This purpose Zenger carried out with 
such fearless exposition of the governor's misdeeds that 
he was made the object of all sorts of persecutions in 
order to silence him. The governor ordered copies of 
Zenger's paper burnt by the hangman, which that official 
refused to do, and "delivered them into the hands of his 
own negroe and ordered him to put them into the fire 
which he did ;" the governor commanded the aldermen 
to attend this aiito-da-fCy whereat they " forbade all 
the members of this Corporation to pay any obedience 
to it." 

Finally, in 1735, the governor succeeded in having 
Zenger tried for libel, for making what strike the mod- 
ern reader as very moderate remarks upon the ursur- 
pations of the royal representative. The young Ger- 
man printer would probably have fallen a victim to 
the hatred and strength of the ruling powers, had he not 
been defended by Andrew Hamilton, of Philadelphia, 
at that time the most celebrated lawyer in the colonies, 
in a speech which is even yet very good reading for its 
wit, its adroitness, its clarity, and its rare and restrained 
eloquence. 

" I am truly very unequal to such an undertaking on 
any account," said Hamilton, " and you see I labor under 
the weight of many years and am borne down with 
great infirmities of body ; yet old and weak as I am, I 

226 



The Redemptioners 

should think it my duty, if required, to go to the ut- 
most part of the land, where my service could be of 
any use in assisting to quench the flame of persecution 
set on foot by the Government to deprive a people of 
the right of remonstrating (and complaining too) of 
the arbitrary attempts of men in power, . . . The 
question before you, gentlemen of the jury, is not of 
small or private concern : it is not the cause of a poor 
printer of New York alone which you are now trying ; 
it may in its consequences affect every free man that 
lives under a British government on the Main of 
America. ... It is the best cause, it is the cause of 
Liberty !" 

It is hardly necessary to say that Zenger, who seems 
to have been universally liked and honored as the repre- 
sentative of that cause of which Hamilton spoke so 
solemnly, was acquitted when " the jury in a small time 
returned," says Zenger, "upon which there were three 
Huzzas in the Hall, which was crowded with people, 
and the next day I was discharged from my Imprison- 
ment." The poor Palatine apprentice lad and the per- 
secuted printer lived to be an honored citizen of New 
York, where he died ten years after this trial. 

In the province of Maryland, most of the German 
emigrants entered through Pennsylvania, coming to the 
port of Philadelphia, and so there was little need for 
the work of a German society until in the early years 
of the nineteenth century, when one was founded. 
There were, however, a few German redemptioners in 
Maryland. 

In South Carolina we know they were quite numerous, 
and, from occasional complaints to the Council of the 

227 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

province, that they had to encounter the same treat- 
ment from avaricious or cruel ship-masters as had their 
brethren of Pennsylvania. Thus, on one occasion the 
records of the Council tell us that " a considerable 
number of Protestant Palatines have been on board 
the St. Andrews, Capt. Brown commanding, these 
twenty-six weeks past and there is yet no likelihood of 
them to get free of her, because there is none yet who 
have purchased their service," so they beg the govern- 
ment to pay their passage money for them, which ad- 
vance they will repay. But a few pages farther. Cap- 
tain Brown's unhappy "freights" complain "that last 
Friday they were the whole day without any sustenance 
and had been the like for several days before." The 
captain, being called to account for his passengers' in- 
voluntary fasting, said coolly that "if they had asked 
him for food in their language, he would not have un- 
derstood them." One poor old woman, widowed during 
the long voyage, and whom, on account of her age, no 
one would buy, was released by Oglethorpe and given 
a home in the Salzburgers' orphan house. 

It seems that Orangeburg and Saxe-Gotha in partic- 
ular received a large part of the increase of population 
which came to them in the years between 1744 and 1750 
through the influx of redemptioners. 

One Southern redemptioner had a romantic family 
history. There was, during the Peasants' War in the 
time of Luther, a Count of Helfenstein, who, with his 
wife and child, was butchered by the maddened peas- 
ants. Some of his family escaped from the slaughter ; 
but so poor did his descendants become that when, in 
the eighteenth century, Frederick Helfenstein desired 

228 



The Redemptioners 

to emigrate to America, he had not the means to pay 
his passage, and he and his wife "served" as redemp- 
tioners in Savannah to make up the sum. He afterwards 
became wealthy, though the British dragoons quartered 
upon him during the Revolution plundered him unspar- 
ingly, his greatest offence being that he had two sons in 
the patriot army. These sons, serving under Wayne in 
a Pennsylvania regiment, thus came to the middle col- 
onies, and the northern branch of the Helfenstein family 
is thought to originate from these exiled soldiers of in- 
dependence. 



229 



CHAPTER XXI 

THE GERMANS AS PIONEERS 

When the French and Indian War was ended, the 
Germans rapidly filled up the counties of Pennsylvania 
west of the Kittatinny Mountains. This country had 
been claimed by the Indians, and was not opened to 
white settlement until the treaty of Albany in 1754. 
The government of the Penns, always scrupulously just 
in its dealing with the old forest friends of Onas, did 
not permit encroachment on the Indians' lands, and fre- 
quently ejected the Irish pioneers who had squatted on 
land not yet opened to settlement, burning their cabins 
and forcing them away. But as soon as white men 
could justly enter, a number of Germans took up land 
there, within the present limits of Perry County, the 
first deed being given to John Pfautz, after whom the 
valley of that name is called. 

That Germans were the first settlers of Schuylkill 
County is proved by the names of the pioneers, Orwig 
and Jaeger. Even in the northerly region of Bradford 
they came first ; two families of the Schoharie people, 
following in 1770 the trail of the Tulpehocken emi- 
gration, found the country so much to their liking that 
they "sought no further." 

As soon as the savage hostilities had ceased, Dunkers 
entered that part of Bedford County now called Blair, 
and from the time of Forbes's victorious march upon 
Fort Duquesne dates the German settlement of Somer- 

230 



The Germans as Pioneers 

set, now a very Teutonic district. In 1769 Berlin was 
begun by some Mennonites, who, in laying out the 
town, charged all the lots with a ground-rent of " a 
Spanish milled dollar" for the benefit of churches and 
schools. When at the end of the Revolution the 
Indians fell upon and destroyed Hanna's-town, the 
earliest capital of Westmoreland County, they were first 
discovered by " the reapers in Michael Huffnagle's field," 
so evidently there were German, residents west of the 
present limits of Somerset. The pioneers of the latter 
district were so alarmed by the destruction of Hanna's- 
town, which was the next settlement to the west of 
them, that they abandoned their homes and did not re- 
turn until the troublous times were over. 

Everywhere along the Pennsylvanian frontier, as well 
as in Maryland, Virginia, the Carolinas, and the new 
country of Kentucky, we find the Germans, either as 
pioneers, as the first permanent settlers, or as following or 
intermingling with the Scotch-Irish, who are commonly 
but mistakenly credited with being always and every- 
where the pioneers. 

The Germans were pioneers in many other directions 
than in that of settling the wilderness : the reader of 
local history is struck with the numerous cases in which 
a man of this race led a colony, laid out a town, or in 
some other way showed himself capable of organizing 
and directing the pioneering of other men. It was very 
commonly the case, in the earlier half of the eighteenth 
century at least, that the German emigrants came in an 
organized body, bringing pastor, school-teacher, and 
sometimes physician with them. 

In business life we see arising among the Germans 

231 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

merchants like the generous and patriotic Michael Kalt- 
eisen, of Charleston, or the honest baker Ludwig. The 
Teutons were pioneers in many lines of manufacture, — 
notably, most of the early iron-masters of Pennsylvania 
were of this nationality. In the South, too. Governor 
Spotswood, the "Tubal-Cain of Virginia," used his 
German settlers in this work. The first German iron- 
master was the Mennonite Kurtz, who built a furnace in 
1726 at Octorara in Lancaster County. The same 
county saw the rise — and fall — of the famous "Baron" 
Stiegel, who came to Manheim in the latter half of the 
eighteenth century, no one knows whence, but with 
plenty of money. He bought the Elizabeth furnace, 
which remained a hundred years in use ; laid out the 
town of Manheim, and gave a lot to the Lutherans for a 
church building at the nominal rental of one red rose in 
June paid to him or his heirs ; he was the first maker of 
flint glass in Pennsylvania. He had two "castles," 
whose furniture was the wonder of the time ; he is said 
to have entertained George Washington at one of his 
residences, to have had a band to play and a cannon 
whose firing announced his arrival, and in general lived 
at such a pace that the Revolution and his extravagance 
combined reduced him to bankruptcy and to teaching 
his former workmen's children for a livelihood. He lies 
in an unknown grave. But the ceremony of paying the 
red rose to his heirs has recently been revived, and now 
the " Feast of Roses" in Manheim every June is one of 
the most interesting and picturesque fetes observed in 
our country. The woollen manufactures of Germantown 
were soon famous, and the name of the town is still the 
designation of a particular kind of worsted. The pottery 

232 



The Germans as Pioneers 

of the Pennsylvania Germans was well known and'good, 
though its decorations and mottoes did not reach a very 
high aesthetic level. The Germans were the earliest 
makers of musical instruments ; the first organ built in 
the United States v/as made some time previous to 1737 
by Matthias Zimmerman, a carpenter and joiner, of 
Philadelphia. Harttafel, Klein, who built the first organ 
for Bethlehem, and the famous Moravian family of or- 
gan-builders, the Tannebergers, some of whose instru- 
ments are still in use, flourished from 1740 to 1770. 
Adam Geib, who "came to New York in 1760 and be- 
gan business on a very unpretentious scale," built the 
old organ of Grace Church, and his sons were among 
the earliest piano-makers of America. 

In paper-making and type-founding they were the 
first and best of American manufacturers in their time. 
The productions of the German press challenge com- 
parison with anything else done in colonial America. 
A phenomenon, rather strange in consideration of the 
Teutonic view of woman's sphere, is the fact that two of 
the earliest woman printers of America were German 
women. The female portion of Zenger's family had 
helped him in his business ; and in 1746-48, after his 
death, his widow Cathrine carried on a printing and 
publishing business " at the Printing Office in Stone 
Street, where Advertisements are taken in and all per- 
sons may be supplied with this Paper," — as her imprint 
announces. A few years before the Revolution, " an 
energetic business woman," the widow of Nicholas Has- 
selbach, conducted in Baltimore the printing-office be- 
queathed by her husband. The attempt to make glass 
at New Germantown in Massachusetts was, however, a 

233 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

failure, as was the wine-making in various parts of the 
country, and, ultimately, the silk manufacture at Ebe- 
nezer. Everywhere, however, we see the German colo- 
nists pursuing the plainer tasks of civilization success- 
fully ; they built churches, schools, and mills wherever 
they went, and supported religion and education in their 
own tongue earnestly. 

But it was as farmers that these colonists won the 
admiration of such aliens as the Philadelphia physician, 
Benjamin Rush. He commends their substantial farm 
buildings, their good judgment of land, their care of 
their stock, their well-built fences, their economy in 
burning wood in stoves instead of the large, wasteful 
fireplaces, and their gardens, which gave them a health- 
ful abundance of vegetables. Dr. Rush speaks, too, of 
the fine, large horses which pulled the Conestoga 
wagons. The commendations which he bestows on the 
farmers he extends to the mechanics of the race, and he 
speaks well of the peaceable, frugal, honest dispositions 
of the kind and friendly people. His whole little book 
shows a knowledge and comprehension of his strange 
fellow-citizens which is refreshing to meet amid the 
mass of ignorant and biassed misjudgment which has 
disfigured much that has been written before and since 
about the Pennsylvania Germans, 



234 



CHAPTER XXII 

THE GERMANS IN THE REVOLUTION 

No one who has seen the activity and vigor of the life 
among the German settlers in the colonial period will be 
surprised that in the event which is generally accepted 
as marking the close of that period — the Revolutionary 
War — they took an important part. In those communi- 
ties where the Germans, few in number, had been as- 
similated, and, as it were, lost, in the English population 
around them, the citizens of German descent stood side by 
side with those of Anglo-Saxon blood in resistance to 
the British. But in the settlements which were as yet 
German, where they had their own language, schools, 
churches, ministers, newspaper and press, we find organi- 
zations purely German taking part in the struggle, and 
the Teutonic element accorded a representation in pro- 
portion to its numbers, influence, and patriotism. So, 
glancing at the smaller settlements, literally " from Maine 
to Georgia," as the older phrase ran, we find the Ger- 
mans everywhere stirred and affected by the birth-throes 
of the new nationality. 

At the little town of Waldoboro, or Broad Bay, a 
German is chosen clerk of the Committee of Correspond- 
ence ; another is the first man in the place to display 
the American flag, the Stars and Stripes, when the new 
ensign is adopted ; and the names, prominent in the 
early annals of the hard-tried little colony, of Ludwig 
and Ulmer, reappear at the head of the numerous 

235 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

militia companies, which, as the phrase ran, "performed 
a tour of duty." Ludwig had been at Crown Point 
during the French and Indian War, and he put his 
miHtary experience again at the service of his country. 
These mihtiamen were chiefly employed in guarding the 
coasts of hundred-harbored Maine against the depre- 
dations of British cruisers, but they were not successful 
in preventing the sufferings which the colonists endured 
from the destruction of crops and propert}^ Of these 
evils of war the Waldoboro people endured their full 
share, and we have the records, no less pathetic because 
of their homeliness, of how the Counce family were 
without bread or potatoes for forty days, and kept an 
involuntar}' Lent by supporting life upon the fish they 
caught, or how one of the Lermonds was favored in that 
his crop of rye ripened unusually early, how he threshed 
it out upon a flat rock, and sold it by the peck to his 
starving neighbors. 

And far away in North Carolina the brethren of the 
Wachovia tract were experiencing the difficulties of 
keeping true to their non-resistant principles when the 
country' was aflame with tumult, hatred, and patriotism 
around tliem. The Regulators before the battle of 
the Alamance insisted that the brethren ought to divide 
their harvests with them ; militiamen and the Tories and 
British troops of Cornwallis alike made the church 
settlements what the brethren patiently and euphemis- 
tically called " rather expensive visits ;" the Provincial 
Assembly tried to meet at peaceful Salem and ' ' failed 
for want of a quorum ;" until, on the Fourth of July, 
1783, "the solemn Thanksgiving Day of the restoration 
of peace was celebrated with great joy and gladness of 

236 



The Germans in the Revokition 

heart and with especial gratitude to the Lord, for all his 
mercies and providential preservation during these trying 
times." 

In Charleston, Michael Kalteisen, a prosperous mer- 
chant, organized a German military company which after- 
wards became the ancient and honorable German Fusil- 
iers, who served through the Revolution with energy 
and distinction. 

In Georgia, most of the Salzburgers in Ebenezer took 
the side of the colonies, and a number of their names 
are found on the honorable roll of the Georgia Pro- 
vincial Congress which met in Savannah in 1775. Their 
names are also found upon another roll in which are 
written those whom General Prevost proscribed for their 
loyalty. We find "Adam Treutlen, rebel governor," 
and a number of " rebel counsellors, colonels," and 
other insurgents obnoxious to the Royalists. When, in 
1779, Prevost made his descent on Georgia and took 
Savannah, he established a post at Ebenezer. One of 
the Salzburger pastors, Triebner, an earnest loyalist, 
offered to guide the British soldiers to his parish, where 
they dug a redoubt, still to be traced, around the church, 
took the building for a hospital and finally desecrated it 
into a stable, shot at mark on the weather-vane which 
bore Luther's swan, and desolated and harried the neigh- 
borhood. The farm-house of Rabenhorst, the other 
pastor, was among those burnt, and the redemptioner 
Helfenstein, whose romantic history has been given, was 
the especial object of attack because he had two sons in 
the patriot army. When at length the British retired 
from Georgia at the close of the war, Triebner went with 
them, which was doubtless prudent, for he must have 

237 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

found it hard to face the wrath of his patriot parishioners 
when they came back to the site of their ruined village 
home. Pastor Triebner was almost an isolated instance 
among the German clergy of adhesion to the royal cause ; 
yet in the neighboring city of Savannah we have the 
most glaring instance of a clergj^man of fine reputation 
and brilliant talents who ruined himself by his rnisplaced 
loyalty. 

This was the Rev. John Joachim Zubly, a clergyman of 
St. Gall, in Switzerland. He arrived in Georgia in 
1746, and after a varied ministr}'- — first at the valiant little 
colony of Frederica, whence he was driven by the Spanish 
attack upon the place, then in South Carolina — he set- 
tled in Savannah, where his talents, learning, and attrac- 
tive character gave him a great reputation and enabled 
him to build up a large congregation. At the outbreak 
of the resistance to England he took the patriot side ; 
he preached an eloquent sermon before the Provincial 
Congress on the alarming state of American affairs, 
based on the text, "So speak ye, and so do, as they 
that shall be judged by the law of liberty," which was 
published in Philadelphia and republished in London. 
He was a delegate both to the Provincial Congress of 
Georgia and to that in Philadelphia, and his position, 
ability, and patriotism gave him great influence. Yet, 
when the actual fact of independence was in sight. Dr. 
Zubly became terrified. He wrote to Sir James Wright, 
Royal Governor of Georgia, warning him of the plans 
of Congress. This correspondence, which could not but 
be considered treasonable, was discovered, and Zubly 
fled, leaving a letter in which he said, " I am off for 
Georgia greatly indisposed." On reaching home he 

238 



The Germans in the Revolution 

openly took sides with the Tories, was banished from the 
city, and part of his property confiscated. He re- 
turned after his royal friends re-established their gov- 
ernment, and was at his post of ministerial duty during 
the siege of the city. He died in Savannah in 1781, 
" broken in heart and broken in fortune," yet loved and 
pitied by many who remained faithful to him to the end 
of a career which had almost led him to the distinction 
of a signer of the Declaration, yet had so fatally and 
sadly failed. The beautiful church of the " Independent 
Presbyterians" in Savannah, a faithful reproduction of 
the old colonial structure, contains an affectionate tablet 
to his memory, — that of a gifted, godly, yet misguided 
man. 

In this glance at the scattered German settlements we 
have omitted the central colonies of New York, Pennsyl- 
vania, Maryland, and Virginia, where the Germans had 
their chief homes, where they were wealthy, numerous, 
and prominent. Did they here show the same character- 
istics of these smaller companies of their nationality? 
We may answer unhesitatingly, yes. " The Germans who 
composed a large part of the inhabitants of the Province 
[of Pennsylvania]," says Bancroft, "were all on the side 
of liberty." As Pennsylvania was the keystone, intellec- 
tually and morally as well as geographically, of the Ger- 
man colonies, we may see in its record an epitome of 
them all. The provinces of New York on the north and 
of Maryland and Virginia on the south were more of 
frontier settlements, — at least in their German portions ; 
they were, in the excellent phrase of one of our historians, 
"the rear-guard of the Revolution ;" from the southern 
provinces went out those hardy German pioneers who 

239 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

explored and settled Kentucky and Tennessee, who 
filled the ranks of Clarke -when he took "the Illinois 
countr\'" for the United States, who rushed to the defeat 
of Ferguson at King's Mountain, but not, we are proud 
to say, those fierce borderers who " left none to mourn 
for Logan" or who slaughtered the Christian Indian 
women and children of Gnadenhiittcn. 

The record of the Germans of Pennsylvania is not 
of frontier warfare but of service in council and field, 
and the Teutonic servants of our infant country were 
many and faithful and valorous. German names are 
numerous in all the committees and conventions which 
preceded or organized the Revolution. We find them 
on the county committees of correspondence, of obser- 
vation, of safet}', in the two provincial conventions in 
Philadelphia, and among the associators. 

The German press teemed with pamphlets, sermons, 
and addresses : one of the most notable of these was the 
" Address" of the vestries of the Reformed and Lutheran 
churches and the officials of the German Society to 
their fellow-countrymen in New York and North Caro- 
lina. It is a very clear, well-written, and temperate 
recital of the causes and course of the Revolution up 
to the time of the pamphlet's appearance, 1775. 
The Pennsylvanian Germans, it says, are associating in 
militia companies for the cause of liberty, raising rifle 
corps, subscribing money. In the midst of this patriotic 
ardor, they are shocked to learn that the Germans of 
Tryon County (Western New York) and of North Caro- 
lina " appear to be unfriendly to the common cause ;" 
but they excuse it by the influence of the Johnson family 
in the Mohawk Valley and by the distance of the fron- 

240 



The Germans in the Revolution 

tier settlements from sources of information. They urge 
their brethren to read the English papers, and promise to 
forward to them what news the more favored Germans 
of Philadelphia may receive. To the pamphlet (a pub- 
lication of the press of Heinrich Miller) are appended the 
addresses of the Continental Congress to the people, to 
the inhabitants of Great Britain, and to King George III. 

Steiner and Cist republished Paine's "Common 
Sense," and were the original publishers of his " Crisis ;" 
afterwards, it was from their press that there issued the 
little stoutly bound duodecimo with its blue paper 
covers, Baron Steuben's " Rules for the order and dis- 
cipline of the troops of the United States." But this 
w^as four years after the Germans of Philadelphia had 
addressed their brethren to the north and south of them, 
and three years after we read in the yellowed files of 
Miller's "Staatsbote" succeeding assurance of the safety 
of " Captain Burr," taken at Quebec, and followed by 
news of Howe's landing (" not universally believed"), the 
item set forth in the boldest antique type that the office 
could boast : 

" Philadelphia, den 5 July. Gestern hat der acht- 
bare Congress dieses vesten Landes die vereinig- 
ten Colonien freye und unabhangige Staaten 
erklaret. Die Declaration in Englisch ist gesetzt in der 
Presse : sie ist datirt den 4ten July, 1776, und wird 
heut oder morgen in druck erscheinen." 

As the "Staatsbote" was the only Philadelphia paper 
which appeared on Friday, and the Declaration was 
adopted on Thursday, it was thus through the columns 
of a Pennsylvania-German paper that the first news of 
independence was published. 
16 241 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

The German pulpits were neither silent nor vmcertain 
in all these crises of new national life : many pastors 
preached to the soldiers when they left, encouraging 
them to their duty, as did Gobrecht, of York County. 
Helfenstein, of Lancaster, addressed departing soldiers 
of his patriotic town from the text, "If the Son shall 
make you free, ye shall be free indeed," — when he had 
to be accompanied home by a guard, so great was the 
excitement ; and also from the words, " If God be for 
us, who can be against us ?" The German soldiers of the 
War of Independence had apparently no doubt that 
God was for them, if we may believe the tradition that 
they marched into battle singing a verse which evinced 
more patriotic than poetic fire : 

'England's Georgel, Kaiser, Konig, 
1st fiir Gott und uns zu wenig. ' ' 

A Montgomery County pastor got himself into trouble 
at the beginning of the war by preaching from the suffi- 
ciently pointed text, " Better is a poor and a wise child 
than an old and foolish king, who will no more be ad- 
monished." Helfenstein also improved the opportunity, 
when the captive Hessians were marched through his 
city, of addressing to them a discourse from the text, " Ye 
have sold yourselves for nought ; and ye shall be redeemed 
without money," which, not unnaturally, "gave great 
offence among the captives." 

Perhaps owing to this outspoken patriotism, the Ger- 
mans, their ministers, property, and churches seemed the 
especial objects of British destruction and spoliation. 
When Pastor Weyberg was released from the prison 
into which he had been cast because of his eloquent ad- 

242 



The Germans in the Revolution 

dresses to the American soldiers, he preached to his 
congregation from the sadly appropriate text, " O God, 
the heathen are come into thine inheritance ; thy holy 
temple have they defiled." The house of the venerable 
Schlatter was plundered, he was imprisoned, and sup- 
ported there by his courageous young daughter, Rachel, 
who, though but a girl of fourteen, used to ride into 
the city from Germantown with food and comforts for 
her father ; the reason for this severity towards the re- 
tired minister was probably that he had two sons in the 
Continental army, one of whom — imprisoned like his 
father — subsequently died from the sufferings of his in- 
carceration. We have mentioned that Pastor Nevelling, 
of New Jersey, was so valued by the British that a reward 
was offered for his apprehension. The sons of the 
patriarch Muhlenberg were obliged to flee from their 
congregations, — Frederick from New York and Ernest 
from Philadelphia. It was during Ernest's enforced 
exile in the country that he began those botanical 
studies which have made his name famous. The Ger- 
mantown pastor was also an exile from his home. 

Meanwhile, in the country districts, the Germans of 
the different counties were well represented upon va- 
rious Revolutionary "Committees," German names 
are common in the committees of Lancaster, Berks, 
Bucks, York, Northampton, Bedford, and Northumber- 
land Counties. 

We find the committeemen engaged upon the most 
various duties. They * directed the formation of the 
associators or minute-men in the earlier part of the war ; 
they took up collections for the relief of the poor of 
Boston during the siege ; they looked to the provision 

243 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

of powder and guns, of "Camp kettles and frying pans 
for the militia." They forbade the selling of tea and 
the holding of dancing-schools, not considering it a time 
to dance. They cited before them people who had 
" been so wicked and abandoned as to speak disrespect- 
fully of the Honorable the Continental Congress." 
Captain Hambright, the Pennsylvania-German chairman 
of the Northumberland County Committee, asks "the 
good people of their townships to spare from each 
family as many blankets as they can for the use of the 
militia and Flying Camp ;" and also (with a canniness 
more suggestive of a Scot than a German) directed that 
the committee should look after "women and children 
whose husbands are now in actual service and who are 
in real distress and need of relief." York, being a fron- 
tier county, discouraged "the consumption of gun- 
powder so necessary to our Indian trade and to the 
hunters of this province, but for the most useful pur- 
poses." The committees also examined whether a cap- 
tain had " hid himself behind an old barn in the battle 
on Long Island," or why another did not march with his 
company, the reply "being in no wise satisfactory." 
Nothing brings before one so vividly the real men and 
women of the War for Independence as the perusal of 
these old minutes, homely, full of quaint detail, but 
showing the development of that character — resourceful, 
vigorous, undaunted — which we now call American. 
To this new nationality the Germans of colonial times 
certainly contributed their share. 

When it was a question of deeds, not words, of fight- 
ing in the field instead of passing resolutions in commit- 
tee meetings, many Germans entered the army. The 

244 



The Germans in the Revolution 

most picturesque of the early Revolutionary bodies were 
the riflemen of the frontier, and among these, whether 
recruited in Virginia, Maryland, or Pennsylvania, we find 
a number of Teutonic names. 

The enthusiasm in Pennsylvania was so great that a 
number in excess of its quota was raised and accepted. 
Of the nine Pennsylvania companies four had German 
captains ; and we have a letter from the York County 
Committee of Safety speaking of the enthusiasm evinced 
in recruiting : " The company are beyond the number 
fixed for this county and as Gen. Gates tho't it improper 
to discharge any, we have sent them all. P.S, The 
company began their march the nearest road to Boston 
this day." 

They arrived fresh and untired, much astonishing the 
New Englanders. "They are remarkably stout and 
hardy men," writes Thacher, "many of them exceeding 
six feet in height. They are dressed in white frocks and 
rifle shirts. These men are remarkable for the accuracy 
of their aim, striking a mark with great certainty at two 
hundred yards distance." They remained in Cambridge, 
the bete noire of the British soldiers, who " are so 
amazingly terrified by our riflemen that they will not 
stir beyond their lines." 

In July three companies of them were sent on the 
unfortunate expedition to Canada with Arnold. A 
young German-speaking volunteer, John Joseph Henry, 
followed the troops to Canada; "nothing," writes 
Colonel Hand, " but a perfect loose to his feelings will 
ever tame his rambling desire." Poor Henry was most 
effectually tamed by the sufferings, starvation, failure, 
capture, and imprisonment which he underwent, and 

245 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

from the effects of which he suffered during the rem- 
nant of his hfe. Man)' of the riflemen died in Quebec ; 
some enhsted in the British army, in order to get a 
chance to escape, and many of them succeeded in the 
enterprise ; the rest were finally exchanged. Hen- 
dricks, the gallant young commander of one of the Cum- 
berland County companies, was killed in the attempted 
assault of Quebec, and his admiring enemies buried him 
by the side of General Montgomery. The remaining 
companies of the riflemen, when their term of enlist- 
ment expired, had become so valuable to Washington — 
"they are indeed a very useful corps," he wrote to 
Congress — that they were reorganized and became the 
First Regiment of the Pennsylvania Line. 

Early in the war it was " resolved to form a German 
Regiment," which was carried out, and it performed long 
and valiant ser\ace at Trenton, at Princeton, at the 
Brand)^^\'ine, at Germantown, endured the hardships of 
Valley Forge, and marched with Sullivan in his expe- 
dition in 1779 to the country of the Six Nations. 

There were Germans in almost all the Pennsylvanian 
regiments of the line, especially in the Second, Third, 
Fifth, Sixth, and Eighth, and many of these organiza- 
tions were commanded by German officers. 

The Legion which was raised by the French noble- 
man, Armand de la Rouerie, who threw himself into our 
War for Independence to forget a luckless love affair, 
contained many Germans : after the deplored death of 
Pulaski, his Legion, also somewhat Teutonic in its com- 
plexion, was incorporated with Armand's. This organi- 
zation seems to have been a general refuge for unlucky 
Germans : when de Heer, who had recruited dragoons 

246 



The Germans in the Revolution 

in the Pennsylvania-German districts in 1777, was cap- 
tured in the Jerseys, the fragments of his command were 
also taken into the French officer's Legion. De Heer 
was an officer of Frederick the Great, and his dragoons 
were Washington's provost guard. 

Among the Pennsylvanian Germans who served their 
province and the Revolution well are two men, utterly dif- 
ferent in character, history, and service, yet alike in one 
thing, — their honest and perfect devotion to the cause 
of liberty : these are the philosopher Rittenhouse, and 
the " baker-in-chief for the army," Christoph Ludwig. 

Rittenhouse, a descendant of the first Mennonite 
preacher of America, the quiet, studious scientist who 
jested during the French and Indian War that " if the 
enemy raided his neighborhood he would probably be 
slain making a telescope as was Archimedes tracing 
geometrical figures," left his peaceful, honored life, his 
calculations, and his instruments, to be the engineer of 
the Committee of Safety, and in this capacity he was 
called upon " to arrange for casting cannon, to view a 
site for a Continental powder mill, to conduct experi- 
ments for rifling cannon and musket balls, fix upon a 
method of fastening the chain for the protection of the 
river, superintend the manufacture of saltpetre and 
locate a magazine for military stores" — on the peaceful 
banks of the Wissahickon ! 

He issued burning addresses to the citizens when the 
enemy was advancing on Philadelphia ; he was a mem- 
ber of the State Assembly and drafted the new State 
Constitution ; he was the first treasurer under this in- 
strument, succeeding another Pennsylvanian German, 
Michael Hillegas. He subsequently fixed the bound- 

247 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

aries of the province and was the first director of the 

United States Mint. A Tory poet, much grieved at 

this poHtical activity of the man of science, wrote pa- 
thetically, — 

" A paltry statesman Rittenhouse became." 

But to most Americans there will appear nothing paltry 
in the spectacle of this first scientist of Penn's province 
laying his time, his talents, and his feeble strength at 
the feet of that cause of "our country" of which the 
descendant of the non-resistant Mennonites wrote so 
warmly. 

The other name which we have mentioned is much 
less known, yet Christoph Ludvvig — " the Governor of 
Letitia Court" — was a prominent figure in his day. An 
old soldier, a sailor, a wide traveller, he finally settled 
down in the little Philadelphia court to his trade of 
confectioner and baker, probably in the expectation of 
a quiet evening to an eventful life. But when the first 
mutterings of the Revolutionary storm were heard the 
old soldier of Frederick the Great could not remain 
quiet. We find him as active on all the Revolutionary 
conventions and committees as he had been in the 
benevolences of the German Society, of which he was 
one of the most energetic members. In 1776 an ad- 
vertisement in the "Staatsbote" tells us that "Christoph 
Ludwig of Letitia Court seeks a man who under- 
stands the making of powder." Once when a proposition 
to raise money by subscription for arms was about to be 
defeated in the convention, a loud voice was heard to 
say in a strong German accent, " Mr. President, I am 
only a poor ginger-bread baker, but put me down for 



The Germans in the Revolution 

two hundred pounds ;" this closed the debate. He was a 
volunteer in the Flying Camp, serving without pay or 
rations. He lost an eye in the service. We have a pic- 
ture of the old man, when a party of mutinous militia 
was about to leave for home, kneeling bareheaded be- 
fore them and beseeching them with strong, homely 
words to stay and fight for the common defence. There 
is reason to believe that he went on a secret mission to 
the Hessians in the British camp, to whom he portrayed 
in glowing colors the happiness and prosperity of the 
patriot Germans of Pennsylvania. 

In 1777 Ludwig was appointed " Director of Baking 
in the Armies of the United States," but when the propo- 
sition was made that he should furnish the army with a 
pound of bread for each pound of flour delivered him, 
as had been the practice of former army bakers, he 
refused. "No," he said, " Christoph Ludwig does not 
want to get rich by the war ; he has money enough;" 
and he explained that one hundred pounds of flour 
should give one hundred and thirty-five pounds of bread 
by the increase in weight of the water, — a fact to which 
"the committee were strangers," although Ludwig's 
rascally predecessors had not been. No wonder that 
Washington's favorite name for him was " honest friend," 
and that a certificate of Washington's appreciation of 
him was one of Ludwig's greatest treasures in his old 
age. 

When the British plundered other German patriots 
they did not overlook the baker-general of the Conti- 
nental army ; but Ludwig, when he returned to his 
desolated house, would not run into debt to replace 
anything, and slept for six weeks in soldierly fashion be- 

249 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

tween blankets rather than borrow money to buy sheets. 
During the yellow fever epidemic of 1797 the old man 
of nearly fourscore worked as a journeyman at the 
bakeoven to provide " bread for the poor in that period 
of awful distress." 

Shortly before his death some one wished to sell him 
a life of Washington, then lately deceased. " No," said 
the general's honest friend, " I am travelling fast to 
meet him. I shall hear all about it from his own mouth." 
And in a few months the old soldier, sailor, baker, and 
patriot passed to meet his old commander. 

He left his money to various religious and benevolent 
institutions, but most of it for the free education of poor 
children, and even yet the Ludwick Institute keeps green 
the memory of Washington's " honest friend," the baker- 
general of the Revolution. 

A Pennsylvania-German woman, whose brave deeds 
in the Revolutionary War are better known than the 
fact of her Teutonic blood, is the heroine of Monmouth 
whom we call by the soldier's nickname of " Moll 
Pitcher." She was a servant in the family of Dr. Irvine, 
of Carlisle, and her maiden name was Maria Ludwig, — 
of course, no relative of the redoubtable Christoph. 
She was married to a man named Heis, or Hays, and 
when her employer went to the war Hays also enlisted. 
" Mollie," as she was called, stayed behind in some anx- 
iety, particularly after a friend, with the kind thought- 
fulness which distinguishes some friendship, came and 
told her of a dream of some misfortune to Mollie's hus- 
band. A few days after, when Mollie's washing was 
just finished and still hung wet upon the line, a man 
came riding up to tell her of her husband's sickness. 

253 



The Germans in the Revolution 

Taking her clothes, still wet, and making them into a 
bundle, Mollie jumped up, pillion fashion, behind the mes- 
senger, and went off to nurse her husband. Once with 
the army she found much to do for other sick soldiers, 
and remained in camp, attending to the wounded and 
carrying water to them in battle : the men used to say, 
"Here comes Moll with her pitcher," and so arose her 
sobriquet. 

Her heroism at the battle of Monmouth, when she 
helped to serve the gun at which her husband had just 
fallen wounded, is famous. For this the husband was 
promoted, and, after the war, the brave woman herself 
was given the pension and brevet rank of a captain. 
The wife of Alexander Hamilton used to speak of her 
recollection of Moll as " a little freckle-faced Irish lass," 
in which, except as to Mollie's nationality, she was prob- 
ably correct. One of " Moll Pitcher's" grandchildren 
described her as a short, thick -set woman with blue eyes, 
reddish hair, and strong, masculine features ; she added 
that the heroine of Monmouth was much feared by her 
grandchildren for her rough, brusque ways ; and that 
she had learnt one thing in the army, — she swore like a 
trooper. 

Care for the suffering Revolutionary soldiers on a 
larger scale than that of "Moll with her pitcher" was 
given by other Pennsylvanian Germans. The hospitals 
of the Revolutionary army during the campaigns in the 
Middle States were almost all located in German settle- 
ments, and the inhabitants showed much kindness to 
the unfortunate soldiers, who suffered terribly, not only 
from wounds but from " camp fever" (typhus), and the 
conditions summed up by the Medical Director-General, 

251 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

Dr. Shippen, as "the want of clothing and covering to 
keep the soldiers clean and warm, — articles not at that 
time procurable in the country : partly from an army 
being composed of raw men, unused to camp life and 
undisciplined, exposed to great hardships and from the 
sick being removed great distances in open wagons." 

There were hospitals at Bethlehem, Lititz, Ephrata, 
Easton, AUentown, Reading, and Lancaster, — all of them 
German centres. The Moravian towns were selected 
because of the large community buildings — the Breth- 
ren's and Sister's Houses and the like — in these places ; 
the same fact probably led to the selection of Ephrata ; 
Bethabara, the Moravian settlement in North Carolina, 
also had a hospital. 

We have few details of any of these establishments 
except of Bethlehem, Lititz, and Ephrata. To Beth- 
lehem were removed the sick of the army during the 
retreat through the Jerseys, but the greatest number of 
these sufferers were sent to Easton and 'AUentown. 
They arrived in Bethlehem in a pitiable condition of 
suffering and neglect ; two soldiers died in the wagons 
while waiting to be taken into the buildings set apart 
for their reception. The good Moravians gave them 
food and clothing, provided coffins and a burial-place 
for the dead, and Bishop Ettwein was constant in his 
ministrations to them. During the occupation of Beth- 
lehem by the sick, he lost a little son from fever, the 
infection being brought by his father from the soldiers' 
bedsides. After the battles of Brandywine and Ger- 
mantown the Moravian settlement was again filled with 
wounded soldiers ; Lafayette was nursed here, after his 
wound at Brandywine, by Mrs. Boeckel and her daughter 

252 



The Germans in the Revolution 

Liesel. It is not known how many of the soldiers died 
in the Bethlehem hospitals during the various times 
when the community houses were so used : the mor- 
tality was so fearful that the number of deaths was kept 
secret ; it is thought to have been about five hundred. 

The hospital at Lititz was filled with typhus patients, 
and they infected those who cared for them. Their two 
surgeons died shortly after the patients were brought to 
Lititz ; five of the Moravian single brethren, who had 
volunteered as nurses, fell victims to their benevolence, 
as did the assistant pastor, Schmick, who had come 
safely through the perils of an Indian mission to die in 
this peaceful pastorate, a sacrifice to his patriotic devo- 
tion. 

The community of Ephrata showed equal kindness 
and unselfishness ; they received after the battle of 
Brandywine about five hundred sick soldiers into their 
town, relinquished to them two of their largest cloister 
buildings, Kedar and Zion, gave them food and main- 
tenance while sick, and buried them when they died, as 
a great number — about two hundred — did. The plot of 
ground where the soldiers are buried is still known, 
though neglected and overgrown with brambles ; the 
project to erect a monument over the remains of these 
soldiers of the Revolution was never carnied out. 

It was very natural that the cloister of Ephrata sho' Id 
take a leading and liberal part in the care of these suf- 
fering soldiers. Miller, the successor of Beissel, was 
prior at that time, a learned and large-minded man, 
esteemed by all who knew him, and a friend and corre- 
spondent of Washington. The legend of Miller's suc- 
cessful endeavor to save a Tory's life may be but a 

253 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

legend, yet it shows the estimate of his character held 
by those who knew him that such a stor}- could have 
grown up about him. The tale is that a certain Michael 
Wittmann had been an enemy and reviler of Miller for 
years. During tlie Revolution Wittmann, who was a 
virulent Tor)-, was arrested and sentenced to death. 
Miller walked from the monaster}' at Ephrata to Wash- 
ington's head-quarters in order to beg Wittmann's life, 
which Washington refused. " Renegades must suffer," 
said the general, " other^vise I should be ver\^ glad to 
release your friend." "Friend!"' exclaimed Miller; "he 
has spit upon and reviled me, he is my bitterest enemy." 
"What, can you ask for the pardon of \-our enemy?" 
said Washington. " Jesus did as much for me," answered 
the good man. Washington then placed the Tory's 
pardon in the prior's hands, saying, "My dear friend, 
I thank you for this example of Christian charity." 

The German portions of the colony of Mar}4and, 
mostly embraced in Frederick Count}', being in near 
neighborhood to Pennsylvania and largely settled from 
that State, show much the same traits in the Revolu- 
tionar}' struggle as we have seen in Penn's province to 
the north of them. 

The "I\Iar}-land Journal" says, "On the second of July, 
1/74, about eight hundred of the principal inhabitants 
of the upper part of Frederick Count}'- assembled at 
Elizabeth Town" (which we will remember was the name 
by which Jonathan Hager desired his town to be known) 
and after passing a number of resolutions " the}' pro- 
ceeded to shew their disapprobation of Lord North's 
Conduct by Hanging and burning his Effig}' after which a 
subscription was opened for the relief of the poor of 

254 



The Germans in the Revolution 

Boston." And a receipt signed by Christopher Edehn 
shows how the poor Germans of the musically named 
settlement of Linganore gave out of their poverty to 
their brethren of Boston suffering in the common cause. 
"John Chrisman lo s., Jacob Hosier 2 s., Peter Kemp 
5 s.," run the sums and names through a long list. 

Among the men of the Revolutionary committees of 
Frederick County we find such names as that of Edelin, 
just mentioned ; of Thomas Schley ; of Jonathan Hager, 
the founder of Hagerstown ; of Ludwig Weltner, later 
colonel of the German Battalion ; and of Christian Orn- 
dorff, afterwards a major in the Sixth Maryland Regi- 
ment. 

Hager had been elected to the General Assembly of 
the province a few years before, but had been declared 
ineligible because not a native-born subject, which pro- 
ceeding was criticised by the governor and his council 
as " unprecedented." Hager, however, was not disabled 
from taking an active part in the Revolutionary move- 
ment up to the time of his sudden accidental death. He 
left two children : the daughter, Rosina, wedded General 
Daniel Hiester, of Reading, one of four brothers who 
served in the Revolution ; and the son was an officer in 
the Revolutionary army, and married Mary Madeline, 
the beautiful daughter of the wealthy and patriotic 
Major Christian Orndorff It is said that General Gates, 
happening, when entertained one day at the hospitable 
house of her father, to catch sight of the young girl as 
she stood in front of a mirror examining the effect of a 
new cap, was so charmed by her loveliness that he wished 
to make her his wife, but the capricious beauty refused 
to marry " a man old enough to be her father," as she 

255 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

said ; and certainly she showed sound judgment when 
she preferred young Hager to the pinchbeck hero of 
Saratoga. 

The Frederick County committees attended to the 
usual business of such Revolutionary organizations, 
raising money and men, buying "powder and Lead," and 
calling to account persons who " refused to associate." 
In the course of these investigations they caught a 
bigger fish than usually came to the net of the back- 
woodsmen, — that is. Dr. John Connolly, who was en- 
deavoring, at the instigation of Lord Dunmore, to raise 
the Indians on the frontier and invade the " back settle- 
ments." We may imagine the feelings of the members 
of a frontier committee in laying hands upon a man 
engaged in such an enterprise. Connolly was rendered 
harmless by being retained as a prisoner to the end of 
the war, certainly a great service done by the Frederick 
County committee. 

Two of the rifle companies sent to Cambridge were 
raised in Frederick County, though, as no rolls have 
been preserved, we cannot tell how many of the rank 
and file were Germans. Shortly after this organization 
was formed it was proposed to raise in Maryland, as had 
been done in Pennsylvania, a German regimicnt, which, 
commanded by Colonel Weltner, was largely recruited 
in Frederick County. Subsequently the remnants of 
the riflemen and the German regiment were both in- 
corporated into the Eighth Regiment of the Mar}4and 
Line. Pulaski recruited his Legion largely in Baltimore, 
and we know that there were many Germans in it. 
While the Polish nobleman was in Baltimore, he pai ^ a 
visit to Bethlehem, where Lafayette was lying wounded, 

256 



The Germans in the Revolution 

and it was then that there occurred the incident of the 
preparation of Pulaski's banner by the sisters of Beth- 
lehem which Longfellow has embalmed in his beautiful 
and wildly inaccurate poem. 

There were also many Maryland Germans in the un- 
lucky organization of the Flying Camp, most of whom 
were captured at Fort Washington and succumbed to 
the hardships and cruelties of British prisons. One ser- 
geant, Lawrence Everheart, when he saw the inevitable 
capture of the fort, ran to the river, got into a boat, 
and made his escape almost miraculously from the 
doomed post. He lived to fight many another day, for, 
returning with the remnants of the Flying Camp to his 
home, he enlisted at Frederick in the regiment of 
Colonel Washington, and followed that daring cavalry- 
man through his various engagements until, being sent 
to reconnoitre Tarleton's position before the battle of 
the Cowpens, Everheart was wounded and captured ; 
he was taken before the British leader, who asked anx- 
iously if Washington and Morgan would fight him. 
"They will," answered Everheart, "if they can keep 
together two hundred men." Taken as a prisoner to 
the field, one of his captors, finding that the prisoner 
was likely to be recaptured, shot him in the head, but 
did not wound him seriously. Everheart rejoined his 
leader, Washington, who, dashing on with his usual 
impetuosity, was set upon by Tarleton himself, and only 
saved from injury by Everheart's disabling Tarleton's 
sword-arm. The German sergeant recovered from his 
wounds and lived to be an honored veteran in his Mary- 
land home, and there received his old commander whose 
life he had saved, when the two soldiers rushed into 
17 257 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

each other's arms with tears. Everheart finally became 
a Methodist preacher, — a strange ending to the career 
of the fiery, daring dragoon. 

The Germans of the Mohawk Valley and of all that 
portion of the present State of New York which was 
known in Revolutionary times as Tryon County had a 
terrible phase of the Revolutionary struggle to en- 
counter : that resulting from the policy of England in 
employing against her rebellious subjects the barbarous 
assistance of the Indians. We have seen the Valley 
scourged with the whip of the French and Indian War, 
but in the Revolutionary struggle it was chastised with 
scorpions. 

As soon as the Revolution threatened, the inhabitants 
of the Mohawk Valley German settlements formed a 
committee, and later their militia organization was com- 
pleted, with Nicholas Herkimer, their defender in the 
previous war, as colonel of the first battalion and other 
Germans at the head of the remaining three. They 
sent few, if any, of their soldiers to serve in any distant 
campaign ; it was evident from the first that the battle 
was to be fought out on their own land and was to be 
a combat to the death for house and home. 

It was not until the summer of 1777 that the unhappy 
Valley knew the full terror of an Indian and Tory inva- 
sion. Meanwhile, the Schoharie people had tried to 
secure the Indians' neutrality ; they held a council with 
them, at which a woman, Mrs, Richtmeyer, was the 
interpreter, and secured from them promises — which the 
Schoharie people themselves did not trust — of peaceable 
behavior. So when the first news reached the German set- 
tlements on the Mohawk that St. Leger, with a large force 

258 



The Germans in the Revolution 

of Indians and the even more hated Tory regiment of 
Johnson's Greens, was marching to besiege Fort Stanwix, 
desolate the Valley, and form a triumphant junction with 
Burgoyne, Herkimer and his fellow- militiamen knew 
what to expect. They were alarmed, like sensible men ; 
but Herkimer, at least, was too brave and steady to be 
terrified. 

Yet of one of the most terrible phases of civil war 
he and his fellow-countrymen of the other settlement 
had bitter knowledge. One of the awful signs of the 
last times is to be that a man's foes shall be those of his 
own household. In Schoharie this was sadly true in 
those days ; there the Revolution set brother against 
brother and father against son. And in Herkimer's own 
family we see the same dreadful result of civil dissension. 
According to one tradition, his own wife had fled to the 
Tories in Canada. A brother, appointed in the first 
Revolutionary uprising to be one of the colonels of mili- 
tia, subsequently had his property confiscated for dis- 
loyalty. His sister, Elizabeth Schuyler, had a son 
whose deficiency of intellect did not excuse the fact 
that he was in correspondence with the enemy. Another 
sister was the wife of Dominie Rosencrantz, who was 
thought more than lukewarm in the cause of liberty. 
His niece, Gertrude, though the widow of an officer 
killed by Brant's Indians in a gallantly vain attempt to 
cany despatches from Fort Plain to Cherry Valley, was 
suspected of having assisted her son by her second mar- 
riage in his flight to Canada. On the other hand, we 
shall see Bell, the husband of Catharine Herkimer, 
though suffering from a wound which disabled him for 
life, yet bringing his wounded brother-in-law from the 

259 



The Grermans in Colonial Times 

field of Oriskany. There were some Germans, though 
they were even-vvhere exceptions, who chose the king's 
side and won rank and such credit as could be gained 
from their adherence : such ^^•as General Daniel Clause, 
a German of the Mohawk Valley who married one of 
Catharine Weissenfels's children, yet a follower of John- 
son and an officer in the British army. 

Against these bloodthirstj' foes in fix>nt and these 
traitors in the rear Herkimer called to arms the mihtia 
of the Valley. It was a /rve'e in tnasst. ** WTiereas," 
saj-s Herkimer's proclamation, '* it appears certain that 
the enemv, about two thousand stronsr. Christians and 
sa\-ages. are arrived at Oswego with the intention to in- 
\-ade our frontier? ... as soon as the enemy approaches 
ever\- male person, being in health, from sixteen to sixt}- 
years of age, in this our count}- shall . . . march to 
oppose the enemy with \"igor as true patriots for the 
just defence of their country-. And those above sixt\- 
j'ears of age shall assemble armed at the places where 
women and children will be gathered together, not 
doubting that the Almighty- power upon our humble 
prayers and sincere trust in him will then graciously 
succor our arms in battle, for our just cause." 

So the little force was collected, and on the morning 
of August 4, 1 777, marched to the rehef of Fort Stanwix, 
then beleaguered by St Leger's Indians and Tories, 
Herkimer had sent the runner Adam Helmer to the 
fort with news of his approach, and had appointed a 
signal — a cannon shot — ^\^-hich was to tell him when to 
attack the besi^ers in their rear. But his men were 
too impatient to av^^ait this ; they urged their general to 
press forward. In \~aln the elder man, an experienced 



The Germans in the Revolution 

Indian fighter, counselled caution, and told them that 
their small company — there were but eight hundred of 
them — and the hard-pressed garrison of the fort were all 
that stood between their homes and utter destruction. 
" I, indeed, have no one to mourn for me," said the 
childless man, "but I am as the father of you all." 
The militia — rashly brave and insubordinate, as was the 
wont of tliese frontier levies — would not listen to their 
gray-haired leader: finally the dissension rose so high that 
men taunted Herkimer with the Toryism of some of his 
family and called the defender of the Valley a coward. 
Herkimer was forced to give way ; but he prophesied, 
only too truly as the event proved, that tliose who had 
been loudest in their taunts would be the first to run. 

The little band plunged into the woods. Crossing 
a causewa}' thrown up in a dark ravine, crowded to- 
gether upon the narrow path, the Indian war-whoop 
was heard, and everywhere the trees broke into rifle-fire ; 
they had been ambushed like Braddock, like Bouquet. 
The rear-guard, who had dared the others to advance, 
turned and fled ; it is some satisfaction to know that 
almost all of these loud-mouthed cowards were slaugh- 
tered in their flight. The rest of tlie frontiersmen 
gathered into circles about Herkimer, who was already 
wounded ; some "took trees," as the backwoods phrase 
was, and when the Indians, waitinii until a ^un was dis- 
charged, rushed in to tomahawk the soldier while he 
loaded, Herkimer directed that two men take a tree and 
one fire while the other load. The brave general's leg 
was shattered, but he ordered his saddle placed against 
a tree, and sat there calmly directing the fight. Some 
of his men urged him to withdraw to a less exposed 

261 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

position. "No," he answered ; " I want to look the enemy 
in the face." Presentiy he took from his pocket pipe, 
tobacco, and flint, and composedly lit his pipe. 

At noon reinforcements reached the British, the Ton,- 
regiment of Johnson's Greens. But instead of causing 
the Germans to give up the fight against such fearful 
odds, this filled them with a Berserker rage that was un- 
conquerable. These were their traitorous fellow-towns- 
men, who had taken up arms against their own flesh and 
blood. The infuriated men could not wait to fire ; they 
clubbed their muskets, they choked the Tories to death 
with their bare hands, they fought hand to hand with 
knives. Before this fur}- o{ hatred and despair the 
Indians raised their retreating cr)- of *' Oo-nah," and the 
British soldiers fled, leaving their dead on the field. But 
the brave farmers had lost frightfully ; many officers were 
killed, some captured ; their loss amounted to one-fourth 
of the number engaged ; whole families were dead on 
the field. A mournful ballad made upon the fight of 
Oriskany deplores : 

" Brave Herkimer, our general's dead 
And Colonel Cox is slain. 
And many more and valiant men 
\Ve ne'er shall see again." 

Some of the fighters took immediate revenge for the 
death of their friends. Thus, Henr}- Diefendorf lay 
d\nng, shot through the lungs ; he begged for water, and 
one of his comrades stamped a little hole in the ground 
and, collecting the rain which fell during part of tlie 
battle, gave a drink to the dying man. Wlien he had 
expired, the friend cried with an oath, " I'll have a life 

262 



The Germans in the Revolution 

for that one," and shot a large Indian lurking behind a 
tree. One of the men, Adam Franks, grew hungry 
during the long fight, so he composedly sat down with 
true German placidity, took some food from his knap- 
sack, and having refreshed himself, dashed forward, cry- 
ing, "Jetzt d'rauf auf die KerP." 

The remnant of the Valley's defenders returned, bring- 
ing with them their wounded general ; he was taken to 
his home and his leg unskilfully amputated. In a few 
days he began to sink. " I am going to follow my leg," 
he said. He wrote a report of the battle, made his 
will, and taking his well-used German Bible, began to 
read the 38th Psalm. " O Lord, rebuke me not in thy 
wrath : neither chasten me in thy hot displeasure. . . . 
My lovers and my friends stand aloof from my sore ; and 
my kinsmen stand afar off. They also that seek after 
my life lay snares for me. ... In thee, O Lord, do I 
hope : thou wilt hear, O Lord my God." So, brave, 
pious, and unafraid, the defender of the Mohawk Valley 
passed away. 

Nicholas Herkimer is described by one who knew him 
as a thick-set, stout man, "not above six feet in height," 
with dark hair prematurely gray. He was not the illiter- 
ate man he is sometimes represented, but well read in 
the Bible (which gave strength to his last hours) and in 
the history of the Reformation. We have seen how sorely 
he was tried by the defection of those near to him, in 
what a horror of sudden surprise and battle he met his 
death, and with what a calm courage he fronted it. He 
remains forever a simply heroic figure of the German 
pioneer. 

Though the stubborn fight of Oriskany had saved the 

26^ 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

Valley for the time, had destroyed Burgoyne's plans and 
led to the first success of the war, the surrender of Sara- 
toga, it was but a temporary remission that was pur- 
chased by all this heroism and loss. In the next year, 
1778, Brant, the pitiless Indian leader, the representa- 
tive of the powerful Johnson interest, and the pious 
translator of the Book of Common Prayer into the 
Mohawk dialect, appeared in his first-named character 
when he attacked and burnt the little settlement of 
Andrustown near German Flats, the most westerly of 
the settlements ; he caught and killed all but one of the 
runners sent out to get intelligence of his movements. 
The one who escaped was the adroit and fleet-footed 
Helmer, whom we shall see again and again repeating his 
successful escape of this time. One German settler, in 
despair, shut himself into his log cabin, and was there 
burnt alive ; his bones were found t^venty years after, 
gathered up and buried, by a Connecticut settler who 
came to this frontier after the Revolution was over. 

Schoharie, which had been less exposed than the 
western settlements, had been able to send militia and 
provision to the assistance of General Gates ; some of 
the patroon Stephen van Rensselaer's German tenants, 
being asked to send what they could spare, stripped 
themselves of provisions to supply the army. When 
the patroon next visited his estates, he greatly surprised 
these Germans by giving them deeds for their lands as a 
mark of his admiration of their generosity ; they had 
not expected, nor thought that they had deserved, any 
reward. 

The Schoharie people, though they sent re -enforce- 
ments to Gates, did not neglect their own defence : they 

264 



The Germans in the Revolution 

had early ordered that the inhabitants should bring their 
rifles to church with them ; they now built forts, arranged 
signals to tell of an Indian invasion, and prepared for 
defence. The women and children were to be gathered 
into these forts, and one gallant girl, Mary Hagedorn, 
refused to go into the cellar of the fort on an alarm. "I 
will take a spear," she said, "which I can use as well as 
any man, and help defend the fort." The captain, 
Hager, understood her spirit. "Then take a spear, 
Mary," he said, " and be ready at the pickets to repel 
an attack." 

To tell all the incidents of the pioneers' defence would 
fill a book : some by their pathos, their courage, or their 
interest, may be added to the story. Such is the tale of 
Catherine Merckley's death. She was accounted the 
most beautiful girl in the Schoharie settlements. She 
was betrothed to a young pioneer, who had given her a 
pair of silver shoe-buckles as a betrothal gift ; they were 
to be married in a fortnight. The Indians attacked her 
on her return from a visit at a neighbor's ; she fell from 
her horse mortally wounded, and died clasping her hands 
over the wound. The Indian who scalped her said as he 
looked at her beautiful, dead face, " She was too hand- 
some a paleface to kill." The next day her lover and 
some other men of the settlement laid her uncoffined 
body in a grave : the silver buckles, his gift, were still 
upon her feet. 

A quaint old ballad begins : 

"A story, a story. 

Unto you I will tell 
About a brave hero, 

His name was Christian Schell. " 
265 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

This hero Hved at Schellsbush, a short distance from 
Fort Dayton near the present Herkimer. His home, a 
strong block-house well adapted to resist Indian forays, 
was attacked by a number of savages under tlie lead of 
a Scotch Tor}% Captain McDonald. Schell, his four sons, 
and his wife composed the garrison ; two of his children, 
twin boys, were captured before tliey could take refuge 
in the house. After vain attempts to set fire to the 
block-house. Captain jMcDonald fell wounded at the 
door. Schell instantl}- dragged him inside, where he 
served tlie double purpose of a hostage and a fresh 
supply of ammunition, which was taken from his person. 
Schell's wife loaded the guns while the men fired, and 
when a desperate attack was made upon the house and 
the enemy thrust their guns through the loop-holes, — 

" she spoiled 
Five guns as I am told 
With nothing but a chopping axe, 
\Miich shows that she was bold." 

In a pause of the fight, she raised the verse of Luther's 
hymn, — 

" Und wenn die Welt veil Teufel war 
Und wollt uns gar veischlingen 
So lurchten wir uns nicht so sehr 
Es muss uns doch gelingen." 

The men joined in, and the brave words of the Mar- 
seillaise of the Reformation rang through the American 
forest Presently tlie attacking part}- drew off, with the 
loss of about twenty of tlieir number at the hands of 
this one family of six German pioneers. It is sad to 
have to record that brave Schell and one of his sons 

266 



The Germans in the Revolution 

were ambushed the next year in their cornfield by In- 
dians, and mortally wounded. When Schell lay dying, 
his neighbor, Hartmann, who had been with him in the 
fatal attack, came from the death-chamber, and being 
questioned how the hero was, answered, we may believe 
with tears as well as bitterness, " He's going to die, and 
he's praying for the 'poor Indians.' " Thus died Chris- 
tian Schell, the hero of Schellsbush, and a Christian in 
deed as in name. 

While the Germans of the Mohawk Valley were 
fighting and suffering in defence of their homes, and 
those of Pennsylvania and Maryland were aiding the 
cause with men, money, and counsel, other frontier 
communities took a different part in the struggle for 
freedom. The Germans of Virginia, most of them 
living in the Shenandoah Valley, took a place between 
the two akin to their geographical station. 

The first stirring of the Revolutionary tide lifted them 
also into the current of the larger national life. By an 
odd coincidence, a Shenandoah Valley lad was present 
and consenting at the Boston Tea Party. Jacob Bum- 
gardner had accompanied his father with his team and 
wagon to distant Boston, and when the mysterious stir 
of the enterprise filled the streets the boy followed the 
crowd, and even went into the hold of the vessel and 
helped to fasten the tea-chests to the rope that they 
might be drawn up for destruction. In order that the 
matter might be kept secret the disguised "Indians" 
were probably glad to use the help of a stranger. This 
participant in the Boston Tea Party afterwards became a 
Revolutionary soldier. 

When the riflemen were called out the frontiersmen 

267 



The Germans in Colonial Times 






of Frederick County, Virginia, formed the first company 
from the Soutli which reached the camp at Cambridge. 
The)' rendezvoused at Morgan's Spring, near Shepherds- 
town, on June 17, 1775, — "not a man was missing." 
After a prayer invoking the blessing of God on their 
enterprise, they started, not before all had "solemnly 
agreed that as man}- of them as might be alive on that 
day fift}- years should meet again at Morgan's Spring ;" 
they shouldered their rifles and, as one of them ex- 
pressed it, "made a bee line for Boston." On that day 
fifty }'ears there were but four of the Virginia riflemen 
living : the two Bedinger brothers, Henry, of Virginia, 
and George ^lichael, of Kentucky ; Lauck, of Win- 
chester, and Hulse, of Wheeling, — names which prove 
the German complexion of the corps. 

The tireless fellows, " aniied with tomahawk and rifles, 
dressed in hunting shirts and moccasins, and seeming to 
walk light and eas)- and not with less spirit than in the 
first hour of their march," reached Boston on the lOth 
of August, having made tlie march of six hundred 
miles in fift}'-four days. As they approached the camp 
of Cambridge, \\*ashington, who was making a recon- 
noissance, came galloping up, and when the captain 
reported his company "from the right bank of the Po- 
tomac, general," tlie stately Virginian tlirew himself 
from his horse and shook hands witli each man of tlie 
\"irginia compaii}', while tears of joy rolled down his 
resolute face. 

The riflemen ser\-cd through tlie siege of Boston, 
and were then embodied in an organization which was 
captured at Fort Washington ; most of the prisoners 
were retained in captivity until the end of die war. The 

26S 



The Germans in the Revolution 

indefatigable Heniy Bedinger, on his release, having 
made his wa}' home with two fellow-soldiers by the gro- 
tesque system of "ride and tie," with a horse which their 
combined finances had purchased for the journey, re- 
entered the army in hopes of assisting at another siege, 
that of Yorktown, which unfortunately ended before 
the former rifleman could reach the front. 

Morgan's riflemen also contained some of the Shenan- 
doah Valley Germans ; six of them formed what was 
known as the "Dutch Mess," and although they went 
through man}' battles they all survived the war, and 
several lived to be ver}- old. Morgan's men were sent 
on the unlucky expedition to Quebec, and one hundred 
of the men with their leader were captured there. 

Another famous German regiment from Virginia was 
the Eighth, of which Peter Muhlenburg, a son of the 
Lutheran patriarch, was colonel, Abraham Bowman, 
lieutenant-colonel, and one of the Helfenstines a major. 
The story of Peter Muhlenberg is well known, at least 
the dramatic incident, better authenticated than most 
such, of how he ended his sermon in the little church 
at Woodstock with the statement, " that in the language 
of holy writ, there was a time for all things, — a time to 
pray and a time to preach, — but those times have passed 
away ; there is a time to fight and the time to fight is 
here." And giving the benediction he descended the 
pulpit, threw off the gown forever, and ordered the 
drums beat at the church door, where he enrolled that 
day three hundred Germans of the valley in his regiment. 
The organization took a severe but honorable part in 
the Revolutionary struggle. General Muhlenberg, as he 
afterwards became, was the trusted friend of Greene, 

269 



The Germans in Colonial Times J 

saved the day at Brandywine, led the re-enforements 
which took the last of the British works at Yorktown, 
and was a valiant, active, honorable soldier. 

Another German, of noble blood, Baron Gerhard von 
der Wieden, is concealed under the plain appellation of 
General Weedon, who commanded a Virginia regiment 
in Muhlenberg's brigade. 

There were man}' Germans in Augusta County, Vir- 
ginia, which tract at the beginning of the Revolutionary 
period liberally included the present West Virginia, Ken- 
tuck\% and most of tlie western countr}' so far as settled. 
Bancroft has noted how these pioneers gave out of their 
poverty to the relief of the people of Boston, bringing their 
gifts through the pathless wilderness. There were many 
Revolutionaiy- soldiers later from among these people. 

A quaint story of these frontier regions at tlie end 
of the war tells how a young officer of the Continental 
army, Lieutenant Brooke, had been ordered to bring a 
detachment of troops through the mountains to join 
Lafayette. The lameness of his horse stopped him at a 
wayside blacksmith-shop, where they spoke only German ; 
the young lieutenant's regimentals exposed him to the 
suspicion of being a British officer, nothing but hunting 
shirts having been seen in that region before. He was 
detained as a prisoner until some one was found who 
could read his English commission and let him pass on. 

Among tlie foreign officers who came to our aid in 
our war for independence were two Germans who are 
well known by name to all Americans, though neither 
ever attained to the popular worship accorded the best 
example of their class, — the French nobleman Lafayette. 
These Germans are Steuben and Kalb. 

270 



The Germans in the Revolution 

The character and services of Steuben are the best 
known and the most important. He was the descendant 
of a mihtary family ; he had served long and honorably 
under Frederick the Great, and was a man of middle 
age when he came to offer his sword to the Americans. 
Landing at Portsmouth in the latter part of the year 
1777, he travelled across the colonies to see Washington 
at Valley Forge and Congress in its refuge at York. 
Passing through "Baron" Stiegel's little town of Man- 
heim in Pennsylvania, the old officer of the great Fred- 
erick was delighted to see his general's picture serving 
as the tavern sign, as, indeed, might be seen in many 
other parts of the colonies, for the " King of Prussia" 
was a very favorite tavern emblem. At Lancaster — then 
the largest inland town in the United States — the Ger- 
man population invited him to a ball, and were very 
proud of the Prussian officer's distinguished manners 
and the brilliant star of the order "pour la Fidelite" 
with which he dazzled their unaccustomed eyes. 

Arriving at Valley Forge, Steuben found a scene of 
misery, confusion, and mismanagement which might 
have daunted a courage less stout. The descriptions of 
the camp have a sad familiarity to our ears, even in this 
end of the century after : the commissary and quarter- 
master's departments, we are told, were in a useless 
confusion ; there was no inspector-general, the person 
appointed to it by popular influence being Conway of 
"cabal" fame, who had never performed its duties; 
there were no hospital nor medical stores, and men sick- 
ened and died for lack of care. 

Steuben found the Continental army " in want of 
provisions, of clothing, of fodder for our horses, in short, 

271 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

of eveniJiing." The ven- officers were in rags. The 
disciple of Frederick tlie Great saw " officers mounting 
guard in a sort of dressing-gown, made of a blanket or 
old woollen bed-cover." His aids shared their rations 
with the starving sentr}^ at their door. He once invited 
a party' of young officers to dine with him on condition 
that none should come " tliat had on a whole pair of 
breeches." The guests clubbed tlieir rations and "we 
feasted sumptuously," says young Duponceau, "on tough 
beefsteak and potatoes with hickory-nuts for dessert" 
The Baron called his gay, brave, }-oung guests his "sans- 
culottes, " and in tliis way originated the nickname which 
was to come into such terrible prominence in another 
and later revolution. And all this privation and suflfer- 
ing was in a country- not so totally exhausted by war 
but that its resources might have availed to feed and 
shelter its troops, had not the miserable political jeal- 
ousies which ruled tlie fallen Continental Congress been 
allowed to interfere. 

Baron Steuben gave up in despair the attempt to 
introduce a better system in place of these abuses and 
turned his energy and talents to the task of disciplining 
the army. By a happy mixture of tact, energy, enthu- 
siasm, and capacity, he succeeded during the miserable 
winter of Valley Forge in bringing out of the untrained 
militia — not, indeed, a Prussian army, but, what was 
more to tlie purpose, an American one, which in the 
next year took the fortress of Stony Point after a bril- 
liant and desperate assault without a shot, at the point 
of the bayonet, — a weapon which the Continental sol- 
dier had pre\-iousIy known only as a good thing upon 
which to stick meat in order to cook it. 



The Germans in the Revolution 

Steuben labored like a drill-sergeant in the personal 
instruction of the troops, and we have a ludicrous de- 
scription of how the baron, unable to speak English, 
would begin to swear in German, then in French, then 
in both languages together. When he had exhausted 
his artillery of foreign oaths he would call to his aids : 
"Viens, mon ami Walker, mon cher Duponceau, come 
and swear for me in English, je ne puis plus, I can curse 
dem no more — dese fellows will not do what I bid dem." 
The men laughed, the needed interpretation was made, 
and presently the movement was faultlessly executed. 

In spite of these hard words, which broke no bones, 
the soldiers loved the bluff old soldier, and so many 
children were named in his honor that he jokingly said, 
when urged to lay aside his title in the republican entliu- 
siasm of the French Revolution, that it would be of no 
use, there were too many " Baron Steubens" in existence. 

He was called pre-eminently " The Baron." A woman 
once came to him to ask permission to name her child 
for him ; " What will you call him ?" asked Steuben, who 
had a profusion of Christian names. " Why, to be sure," 
said the woman, "I'll call him ' Baron.' " 

He acquired one namesake under singular circum- 
stances. Inspecting a Connecticut regiment one day. 
Baron Steuben found a fine soldierly sergeant named 
Jonathan Arnold. The Baron, who had sat on the court 
which unwillingly condemned the hapless Andre and had 
the utmost detestation of "the wretch who drew him to 
death," advised the man to change his name. "But 
what name shall I take?" said Arnold. "Any name 
you please; take mine," cried the baron, "mine is at 
your service." So Jonathan Arnold duly became Jona- 
i8 273 



The Germans in Colonial Times 



than Steuben, and under that appellation fought well, 
and returning to his Connecticut home after the war, 
married and had a son, whom he named, after his own 
patriotic godfather, Frederick William. To him Baron 
Steuben willed a farm, and Frederick William Steuben 
of Connecticut was a good soldier in the war of 1812, 
dying in the ser\ice. The adoption of English names 
b}' Germans is a lamentably frequent thing, but the 
taking of this German name by a Connecticut Yankee 
is unique, both in its occurrence and its reasons. 

Towards the end of the war, when Steuben was sent 
South to assist Gates in his contest with Cornwallis, he 
found the same disorganization, suffering, and peculation 
rife out of which he had brought order at \^alley Forge. 
He had the happiness to see his " Rules for the Order 
and Discipline of the Army of the United States," the 
famous " Blue Book," which he wrote with such pains and 
difficulties, adopted as the regulations of the victorious 
Continental army ; to see his adaptation of tlie American 
riflemen's skirmishing tactics studied, applauded, and 
adopted by Frederick the Great, his own former teacher 
in the art of war ; and to know himself beloved and 
honored by the countr\- and the arnw which he had 
helped to create and to save. 

The other German soldier whom we have mentioned 
Avith Steuben is a much less s\'mpathetic figure than the 
bluff, passionate, warm-hearted old baron. He, too, 
claimed to be a nobleman, and called himself and was 
called Baron De Kalb. But tlie cold fact of historj'- is 
that he was the son of a Bayreutli yeoman, who left his 
peasant home at Hiittersdorf in the elevated capacity 
of a waiter, and, after a score or so of years, reappeared, 

274 



1 



■ The Germans in the Revolution 

a lieutenant in the French army, " M. Jean de Kalb, son 
of the Seigneur de Huettersdorf." He had assumed 
the nobility, without which his mihtary career would 
have been forever barred to him ; and we must not be 
too severe upon a frequent and perhaps innocent decep- 
tion. 

His succeeding career is of a piece with this rather 
dubious beginning. After the passage of the Stamp Act, 
he was sent by Choiseul to America on secret service 
to discover the extent of the disaffection of England's 
colonies and how far it could be used in the French 
minister's attempt to crush England's colonial power, as 
that of the French had been crushed at Quebec. De 
Kalb (to give him his chosen name), travelled for six 
months over the American colonies, but reported to his 
master that the disaffection was not yet so extreme as to 
impel the colonies to actual rebellion, and so Choiseul's 
project of fomenting and assisting it was dropped. 

For eight years De Kalb had no more connection 
with America, until, in the year of the Declaration of 
Independence, he joined the expedition of Lafayette to 
put his sword at the service of the cause of liberty. The 
older soldier was to be the head of the expedition and 
his promised commission to antedate that of the young 
Lafayette. 

The two men were utterly different in their characters, 
motives, and intentions. De Kalb's biographer says well 
that Lafayette's ship, the Victory, " brought over the 
last of the condottieri and the last of the knifrhts- 
errant." Yet De Kalb, though a mere and a typical 
soldier of fortune, served his temporary country well 
and faithfully, even when sorely tried by the jealous and 

27^ 



The Germans in Colonial Times 



I 



meddling Congress, the undisciplined militia, and the un- 
civil native American officers. He regarded Washington 
as weak, a judgment in which he probably stands alone 
among the men who served under the patient, undaunted 
resolute Virginian. But if he could not appreciate "this 
imperial man," he at least understood the situation well 
enough to be convinced of the impracticabilit}' of the 
ridiculous plan which he had come to carr}^ out — that 
of making the Due de Broglie commander-in-chief of 
the patriot armies. The duke had been certain that 
"a militar}' and political leader is wanted," and equally- 
convinced that he was fitted to be that leader. The 
French volunteers soon gave up this idea. 

De Kalb served and suffered bravely in the long, 
wearisome struggle against not only the British enemy, 
but the supineness of the people, the wrong-headedness 
of Congress, and- the wretched provision for the army ; 
and he crowned his ser\'ice by a hero's death in the ter- 
rible defeat when Gates's army was cut to pieces at 
Camden. That thinly plated hero " rode rapidly away" 
when the troops first broke, but the foreign soldier led 
charge after charge against tlie unbroken British army 
until he fell, a mortally wounded prisoner, pierced by 
eleven bullets. 

In person and character Kalb was a t\'pe of the 
peasant race from which he sprang : fair and tall, vigor- 
ous even in advanced life, temperate and self-restrained, 
devoted to his wife and family, capable of enormous 
work, and, although but a soldier of fortune, faithful unto 
death to tlie colors and the country which he was 
serving. 

276 



CHAPTER XXIII 

"THE REAR-GUARD OF THE REVOLUTION" 

At the same time that frontiersmen were helping the 
cause of the sea-board colonies, they were engaged upon 
an enterprise daring and strenuous enough to have, of 
itself, furnished an outlet for less plentiful energies. It 
gives one a fresh conception of the strength of this 
young giant of the West when one sees the people of 
the East building a nation, raising an army, fighting a 
revolution ; and knows that at the same time, to the 
westward, the same nationality was passing the barrier 
of the wilderness, struggling with stealthy Indians and 
British soldiers, and conquering from both their posses- 
sions in the Mississippi Valley. 

Among these pioneers of Kentucky and Tennessee, 
these pathfinders of the Wilderness Trace, and back- 
woodsmen led by Clark into " the Illinois country," there 
were many Germans. In fact, it would be strange were 
it otherwise, for "the West" of those days was reached 
through the Shenandoah Valley, and its hunters, pio- 
neers, and permanent settlers came from the Valley of 
Virginia and the mountains of the Carolinas — both sec- 
tions containing many men of Teutonic race. 

Among the men Avho early wandered over Kentucky 
and Tennessee, before any permanent settlement was 
attempted, we find the names of George Jager, Michael 

277 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

Stoner, Caspar Mansker, Isaac and Abram Hite, and John 
and Abraham Bowman. 

It was Jager who first fired the imagination of Simon 
Kenton by a description of the wonderfully rich country 
of " the cane brakes' ' — Kentucky. Jager had been taken 
prisoner by the Indians when a child, and had spent 
years living in their villages and hunting with them ; on 
many of these expeditions he had been upon buffalo 
hunts in Kentucky, and he described the richness of the 
country and the abundance of game in such glowing 
terms that Kenton with Strader — probably another Ger- 
man — went down the Ohio in search of this hunter's 
paradise. They did not find any country' answering to 
Jager's description, and were beginning to doubt his 
word, when they were attacked by Indians, Strader was 
killed and the other two fled in panic from " the dark 
and bloody ground." Kenton subsequently returned 
alone, and discovered Jager's Elysium on the banks of 
the Licking. 

Michael Stoner, (really Steiner) was also among the 
many daring hunters and guides who camped and hunted 
in Kentucky j'ears before there was any thought of per- 
manent settlement there. As early as 1 767 he was with 
Harrod, — afterwards the founder of Harrodsburg, — and 
they went as far south as the future site of Nashville. 
In 1774 Governor Dunmore sent him with Daniel Boone, 
to find, and bring out to safety and civilization, a party 
of surveyors deep in the western wilderness at the " Falls 
of the Ohio," which we now call Louisville. Stoner and 
Boone made the journey of eight hundred miles through 
the wilderness in sixty-two days, and brought the pio- 
neers of the rod and chain home without harm. In the 

27S 



" The Rear-Guard of the Revolution" 

next year, while the Eastern colonies were seething with 
revolt and the first blood of the Revolution was shed, 
Michael Stoner was "making a crop of corn" in the 
new, rich land. 

Casper Mansker, the third of the German pioneers I 
have just named, had a much longer and more interest- 
ing connection with the winning of the West. He was 
with the famous "Long Hunters," who left the Holston 
settlements in the backwoods of the province of North 
Carolina in 1769 and were so fascinated by the wilder- 
ness, its novelty, its dangers, and its hunting, that some 
of the party did not return for a year, and hence got 
their picturesque name. Caspar Mansker (whose name 
is usually disguised as " Mansco," while his "station" 
was called simply Caspar's) led one division of this large 
party back over the mountains with a drove of horses 
which was being taken, through the Indian towns, to 
Georgia. He went back and forth over the Cumber- 
land mountains many times. He was the first white 
man to navigate the Cumberland river, descending the 
stream in 1770 by means of a canoe. We hear fre- 
quently that "Captain Mansco" has "bro't out a party," 
for which duty of guard and escort he was paid in what 
was known as " guard certificates," — orders which passed 
as currency in the wilds of Tennessee. When on this 
duty he would not allow any one to march in advance, 
" to take away the scent from him," as he expressed it 
He had well-grounded confidence in his ability to detect 
Indian snares : "I can see pote sides and pehind, too," 
he used to say ; yet he was once "gobbled up" by an 
Indian hunter, — not captured, but decoyed into range 
by the imitation of the wild turkey's call. Mansker de- 

279 



The Germans In Colonial Times 

tected the imposition in time to kill the Indian, though 
he averred that he would not have done so, it was the 
act of his pet rifle, his " Nancy," as he called her ; when 
the Indian came in range, " Nancy wanted to speak to 
him," and spoke with fatal effect Of this gun he was 
almost as fond as he was of his " gute alte frau." Like 
Sergeant Everheart, who saved Colonel Washington's 
life in the hand-to-hand conflict with Tarleton, Mansker 
in his old days became an ardent and earnest Methodist. 

Among the names signed to the Compact of Govern- 
ment when the backwoods commonwealth was formed at 
Nashville in 1 780 are several German ones ; the bearers 
we find, as we pursue the history of early Tennessee, 
meeting with tragic fates sometimes. Besides Mansker — 
who, indeed, lived to a green old age, owning one of the 
best mills in the settlement — we find Coonrod, crushed 
by a falling tree on the site of Nashville, and Jacob 
Stump, killed by Indians in his field, while his father, 
" old Fred Stump," just escaped with his life by running ; 
"By sure, I did run dat time," the old German was 
wont to say, looking back upon his experience. He 
was a rival of Mansker in the milling business in later 
and more peaceful times. 

Abram and Isaac Hite were surveyors, early settlers, 
and explorers of those times ; Abram was one of the 
party who, in 1774, cut down the first trees on the 
present site of Cincinnati. Isaac was one of the sur- 
veying part}' brought home by Stoner and Boone ; he 
led a company of adventurers to Harrod's station in 
1774 ; he "raised corn" in the countr}'. and sat in the 
Transylvania legislature which met under the elm-tree 
in 1775, and — not contented with the too-peaceful life 

2S0 



. " The Rear-Guard of the Revolution" 

of Harrod's station — he went with an exploring party 
south as far as BowHng Green. He and "Abram Hite, 
Jr.," were part of the garrison of Harrodsburg in the 
winter of lyyj—y^, and he went with the second ex- 
pedition to Maryland after powder and (more courageous 
than the first) brought it across the wilderness to the 
garrison. 

It is probable that the Hites were descendants of that 
Jost Heit who led the Pennsylvania Germans into the 
Valley of Virginia ; the Bowmans we know descended 
from Heit's son-in-law, who was one of that patriarchal 
train who had come a generation before to settle what 
was then the wilderness ; and the wandering foot must 
have been an inheritance of the race. 

John Bowman was one of the captains sent East to 
recruit men for Clark's expedition to the Illinois ; an- 
other captain whose name shows his race was Leonard 
Helm ; but, indeed, a large proportion of this expedi- 
tion was probably drawn from the Germans of the Val- 
ley, for Governor Patrick Henry feared the weakening 
of the sea-board people in their Revolutionary struggle 
by recruiting many men among them, and specially 
ordered that the companies be raised west of the Blue 
Ridge. 

We know the story of how Clark and his backwoods- 
men surprised and captured the British posts. Captain 
Bowman received the surrender of Cahokia, and Captain 
Helm was put in command of the captured Vincennes, 
which was soon taken by the British and Helm retained 
as a prisoner. Most of his tiny garrison had been cut 
off, and resistance was impossible ; but the heroic story 
of his marching out, accompanied by one soldier, with 

281 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

the honors of war on account of his brave defence, has 
not much authority, and we must surrender the tale as 
reluctantly as Helm did the fort. 

Bowman was the commander of one of the com- 
panies which the undaunted Clark took on his terrible 
march to reconquer Vincennes, and it is to him that we 
owe the best account, his contemporary- "journal" of 
the expedition. His jottings picture it all to us better 
than the lengthy descriptions of formal historians : "The 
road very bad from the immense quantit}- of rain that 
had fallen. The men much fatigued." "Marched all 
day thro' rain and water. Our provisions began to be 
short." " Many of the men much cast down, particu- 
larly the volunteers." " Camp very quiet but hungr)' ; 
some almost in despair." " Our pilots say we cannot 
get along — that it is impossible." " Heard the morning 
and evening guns from the fort. No provisions yet. 
Lord, help us!" "Set off to cross the Horse-Shoe 
plain about four miles long all covered with water breast 
high. Here we expected some of our brave men must 
certainly perish, ha\ing froze in the night and so long 
fasting. Having no other resource than wading this 
plain or rather lake of waters we plunged into it with 
courage. Never were men so animated with the thought 
of avenging the wrongs done the back settlements as 
this small army was." And never surely did a handful 
of frozen, star\ang men make so glorious a conquest as 
this, when Post St. Vincents and the whole British pos- 
session of the Northwest Territory' fell before them. 

We have a whimsical picture of the captive Helm 
comfortably drinking apple-toddy with the commandant 
when Clark's half-perished heroes began to fire upon 

2S2 



" The Rear-Guard of the Revolution" 

the post, a picture perhaps not exact, but certainly well 
invented, for the gallant Helm was fond of the pleasures 
of the table. 

Soon after, we see him free and in arms again, on an 
expedition to intercept stores for what Bowman calls 
phonetically Omi (by which he means Aux Miami, the 
present site of Fort Wayne), which is brilliantly suc- 
cessful. " He took seven boats loaded with provisions," 
writes Bowman, who was disabled from active service 
now by an accidental explosion of powder in firing the 
thirteen guns which announced the cession of the fort 
to the Americans. Presently Bowman notes that Helm 
is left to command the town in all civil matters, and that 
" the boats are run out of sight" with the prisoners for 
Kaskaskia — " God send a good and safe passage," prays 
the pious Bowman. 

When Bowman returned to Kentucky we do not 
know ; some time after we find him in command of the 
expedition against the Indian town of Old Chillicothe, 
where he was thought to have shown "torpor" in attack- 
ing the strong and well-defended place. Boone says, 
guardedly, that the expedition turned out "not to the 
advantage of Colonel Bowman's party," which was at- 
tacked on its retreat, and only enabled to get off by 
the exertions of Major Bedinger and a few other de- 
termined men, who dashed into the bushes on horse 
back, scoured the woods in every direction, and cut 
down as many of the Indians as they could overtake. 

This Major George Michael Bedinger, who, having 
"been in the war to the eastward," had been appointed 
adjutant of the Chillicothe expedition, might be taken as 
a typical figure of the later pioneer and settler of Ken- 

28^ 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

tuck}'. Born in Pennsylvania, taken to Virginia as a 
child, he grew up on the border. At the house of his 
widowed mother was held the first gathering of Stephen- 
son's riflemen. His elder brother, Heniy, was a ser- 
geant in the company which George Michael also joined. 
He was at the siege of Boston and also at Fort W'ash- 
ington, where he was taken prisoner but — more fortunate 
than his brother — was soon exchanged. 

Meanwhile, a third of the widow Bedinger's sons, 
Daniel, a lad of sixteen, had run away to join the 
patriot army, and was also a prisoner, taken at Brand}-- 
wine. When the British evacuated Philadelphia, George 
Michael went there and found the bo)' Daniel, appar- 
ently dying, on a pile of straw in a deserted British hos- 
pital. " Michael knelt by the side of the poor emaciated 
boy, took him in his arms, and carried him to a house 
where he could procure some comforts in the way of 
food. He got an arm-chair and some leather straps, put 
Daniel in the chair, swung him by the strap on his back, 
and carried him some miles into the country to a farm- 
house. Daniel was very impatient to travel, and left 
before he was well able to walk, while Michael walked 
by his side with his arm around him to support him. 
Thus they travelled from Philadelphia to Shepherds- 
town." 

Soon after, George Michael emigrated to Kentuck)-, 
and we find him with a part}^ of ten others from his old 
neighborhood " improving land" on the Licking. He 
had been in Kentucky but a few months when he was 
called to go on the expedition to Chillicothe ; three 
years after, at the disastrous rout of the Blue Licks, 
Major Bedinger is said to have again " borne himself 

2S4 



" The Rear-Guard of the Rcvohition" 

gallantly as a brave and efficient officer." He lived to 
marry one of the Clay family, be the proprietor of the 
famous Blue Licks, and die there full of years and honors. 

To mention all the German pioneers whose deeds and 
names are recorded would fill a book in itself German 
names are abundant on the rolls of service of the militia 
companies, particularly those of Bowman and Holder ; 
we hear that in Woodford County, there was " quite a 
respectable number of families from Germany." Tradi- 
tion has preserved the speech of a Mrs. Coffman, whose 
nationality shows through the disguised spelling ; when 
informed that the Indians had killed her husband, the 
bereaved widow asserted that " she would rather have 
lost her best cow than her old man." 

More heroic figures are the backwoodsmen Crist and 
Crepps, who, attacked with thirteen others, — one a 
woman, — while on a salt-making expedition, managed 
to defend their boat until half their men were killed ; 
then the two left the boat, but Crepps fell mortally 
wounded soon after. He was found and brought into a 
fort to die, while the rough backwoodsmen, never prone 
to enthusiasm, lamented over the " tall, fair, handsome 
man, Icind, brave, and enterprising, the lion of the 
fight," exposing himself with cool courage in the vain 
hope of saving the others. 

Crist, his companion, dragged himself through the 
woods ; he could not walk, a bullet had crushed the 
bones of his heel. He bound his moccasons on his 
knees and crawled on. At night he came to an Indian 
camp-fire, but was not seen, and crept through a little 
" branch" or stream that he might leave no trace. His 
clothes were torn to rags, his wounded leg was so stiff 

285 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

and swollen that he could only drag it after him. After 
four days of such crawling, with no food and but little 
water, he came in sight of Bullitt's Lick. He called for 
help, but a passing negro thought it an alarm of ap- 
proaching Indians and rushed away. The white men at 
the Lick were more clear-headed ; they came out to 
search the woods, found Crist, unable to lift a hand, and 
carried him to the settlement. " His recover}^," says 
the chronicler, " was slow and doubtful, it was a year 
before he was a man again ;" but he lived to be old and 
hale. 

One more type of the German pioneer must be men- 
tioned — the fierce, implacable, unscrupulous Lidian 
fighter, the terror of the red men, and the darling of the 
rougher element on the border, Lewis Wetzel. He had 
once been wounded and taken prisoner, with a younger 
brother, by the Indians, but he soon escaped, showing a 
coolness and daring at his early age — he was but four- 
teen — which many older men might envy. His father 
was afterwards killed by the Indians, and he and a 
brother vowed that thereafter so long as they lived they 
would kill every Indian they could. They fulfilled 
this pious engagement nobly ; it is said that Lewis 
Wetzel took more scalps than the two armies of St. 
Clair and Braddock put together. 

Lewis would go hunting Indians as other men hunt 
game ; both he and his brother killed Indians who came 
to treat under promise of safe-conduct. He slaugh- 
tered the savages under any circumstances of barbarity, 
treachery, and personal danger ; yet withal he was so 
admired that when an American general arrested him 
for one of his murders, a plot was formed to assassinate 

286 



" The Rear-Guard of the Revolution" 

the arresting officer, the whole country was in a flame, 
and petitions for his release poured in. He is described 
as a man of powerful frame, with piercing black eyes, 
and hair which, when he unbound it, fell to his knees. 
It will be recollected that Kenton's opponent in his 
early fight had such hair, and that Kenton gained the 
victory over him by winding the man's locks about a 
tree and thrashing him — as Kenton thought, to death — 
in this Absalom-like posture. 

The frontiers of North Carolina contained many Ger- 
mans, mostly emigrants from Pennsylvania. Here par- 
tisan warfare, with its barbarities and cruelties, its assas- 
sination and satisfaction of private grudges under color 
of a public cause, raged in all its shamefulness. 

At the time after Charleston had fallen, when Corn- 
wallis was overrunning the State and many of the most 
determined patriots — men like Pickens and Hayne — 
were reduced to " take British protection," as it was then 
called, many of the more peaceable and simple-minded 
Germans of the frontier did likewise. A large propor- 
tion of the Tories attacked by the Whig militia at Ram- 
sour's Mills in- 1780 were of this class and unarmed, 
yet they made a stand against the militia, who scattered 
after the first few volleys and could not be brought 
together. 

The wife of Christian Reinhardt had left her house at 
the beginning of the skirmish and taken refuge in a 
neighboring canebrake. Here a frightened deer came, 
looked for a moment at the cowering woman and her 
little children and dashed off. When the fight was over, 
Mrs. Reinhardt returned to her home, to find the house, 
the stables, and even the smoke-house filled with the 

287 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

dead and wounded. She gave so freely of her sheets 
and blankets as winding-sheets for the dead that in a short 
time she had no linen left. 

The Toryism of the residents about Ramsour's Mills 
must have been assumed only under stress of circum- 
stances, for when Cornwallis afterwards marched through 
the locality his Hessians fraternized with the Germans 
there to such disastrous effect that many of the mer- 
cenaries deserted from the British service. 

Mecklenburg County, though its inhabitants were 
mostly Scotch-Irish, had a few Germans, and the name 
of one, John Phifer (Pfeifer), is among the signers of the 
famous, if rather dubious, " Mecklenburg Declaration." 
Phifer was afterwards a minute-man, and a member of 
the Provincial Conventions of 1775 and 1776, but died 
early. 

Another German, Frederick Hambright, brought as a 
child from Germany and afterwards emigrating to North 
Carolina after a residence in Virginia, traces for us the 
course of most of the Germans populating the old North 
State. He left relatives in Pennsylvania, where Ave have 
seen John Hambright vigorously administering the affairs 
of the Northumberland County Committee of Safety. 
Frederick Hambright was also one of the Associators 
of Tryon — afterwards Lincoln — County, in his new home, 
with such other Germans or Swiss as the Forneys, Seitz, 
and many unmistakable names. He performed many 
"tours of duty" as a militiaman, and sat also in the 
Provincial Convention of 1775. 

When in 1 780 the call was issued for the gathering of 
the bordermen to take Ferguson at King's Mountain, 
such a man as Hambright could not be missing, and ac- 

288 



" The Rear-Guard of the Revolution" 

cordingly he and his son John marched to meet the 
" over-mountain men." By the departure of their 
colonel Hambright would have succeeded to the com- 
mand, but on account of his age — he was then over 
fifty — it was thought best to appoint a younger man. 
But the Pennsylvanian German cared too much for the 
cause to be angered by the slight, and when subsequently 
this officer was killed he took the command which was 
his by right. 

On the way to attack the British, the intelligence was 
brought in that Ferguson was to be known by the rich- 
ness of his uniform, but that he had on a checked shirt 
over it. The German frontiersman instantly called the 
attention of his "South Fork boys" to this. "Well, 
poys," he said, in his German accent, "when you see 
dat man mit a pig shirt on over his clothes, you may 
know him who he is ;" and they did know him, and with 
their unerring Deckhard rifles (made in Pennsylvania- 
German Lancaster and esteemed the best rifle on the 
frontier) they brought down the British officer. 

During one of the gallant charges with which the 
English turned back the steady climbing of the riflemen 
up the mountain — only to have them return, take trees, 
and resume the attack — Hambright was wounded in the 
thigh ; he would not speak of it, but when it was dis- 
covered by his men and they urged him to leave the 
field, he answered that "he knew he was wounded, but 
he was not sick or faint ; he could still ride very well, 
and he deemed it his duty to fight on till the battle was 
over." When he was taken from his horse after the 
battle, the blood had filled his boot. He remained per- 
manently lame from the injury. Afterwards he said he 
19 289 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

had been afraid that if he had given up, his men would! 
have neglected " to load and fire as often as they should ;• 
they might have stopped fighting to care for him," — 
which was not what the resolute old man would have 
approved. He left a numerous posterity to inherit his 
fame, being the father of twenty-two children ; he lived 
to ninety years of age, an elder in the Shiloh Presby- 
terian Church — peaceful name ! 

One of Hambright's soldiers, Abram Forney, a Swiss, 
after the fight saved the life of a Tory neighbor who 
besought him earnestly to "get him out of this bull- 
pen," promising faithful service to the patriot cause, — 
which promise he redeemed, for he fought well at Guil- 
ford Courthouse in the next year. Forney, who be- 
longed to an earnestly patriotic family and had much 
Tory plundering to revenge, being at Guilford Court- 
house himself, found his term of enlistment expired 
before the battle, but could not refrain from staying " to 
see the shooting-match," as he expressed it. 

They were a resolute, hard-fighting, hard-hitting set 
of men — these mountaineers of the wilderness ; but in 
spite of their lack of discipline, their Indian-like useless- 
ness for a regular campaign, and their many other fail- 
ings, one cannot but admire the cool courage of men to 
whom a battle was "a shooting-match," or who, wounded 
and bleeding, " deemed it their dut}^ to fight on," 

The last incident of Revolutionary history which affects 
the Germans is one in which they were the victims and 
not the aggressors : the massacre of the Moravian con- 
verts at Gnadenhiitten. Among the militia, fierce and 
lawless, who did this shameful thing there were no Ger- 
mans. They were Scotch-Irish borderers from Western 

290 



" The Rear-Guard of the Revolution" 

Pennsylvania who were urged to it by indiscriminating 
hatred of all Indians, whether or not they had done 
the white men harm. 

The Indian missions of the Moravian church in the 
Tuscarawas Valley of Ohio were prosperous and beauti- 
ful villages, the wonder and admiration of both white 
and native visitors ; they had churches and schools, com- 
fortable log houses, good plantations, and farm-yards 
filled with cattle and poultry. During the whole course 
of the Revolutionary War, the Moravian missionaries, 
with the help of the " national assistants" or converted 
Indian helpers, had succeeded in keeping their converts 
from taking part in hostilities on either side, the Breth- 
ren's Unity having, like the Friends, a testimony against 
war. But renegade Moravian Indians may have taken 
part in border forays, though they were expelled from 
the church when this was known ; and the dangerous 
laws of Indian hospitality made it incumbent upon the 
people of Gnadenhutten to entertain all comers, whether 
war parties bound for the settlements or Brodhead's 
American troops on their way against the savage Indians. 
Often the missionaries succeeded in turning back these 
war parties ; Zeisberger and Heckewelder also sent early 
intelligence to Fort Pitt of any projected Indian forays, 
and often saved the frontiers by this means, but these 
communications were necessarily confidential, known 
only to the commanding officers at the fort, and there- 
fore did nothing to allay the popular distrust. 

There was suspicion on the border that the Christian 
towns of the Tuscarawas were "half-way houses" for 
their hated assailants, and when, in the spring of 1782, a 
family of Scotch settlers were murdered, a company of 

2QI 



The Germans in Colonial Times 



I 



Western Pennsylvania militia, led by Colonel Williamson, 
was raised to revenge this deed upon its supposed authors, 
the Moravian converts. 

The winter before, the Hurons and other heathen 
tribes had descended upon Gnadenhiitten and taken 
away all its inhabitants as prisoners to the British gar- 
rison at Detroit. After a miserable winter a remnant of 
the Christian Indians, plundered and poor, had obtained 
permission to return to the villages of Gnadenhiitten 
and Salem to make a crop and to gather together their 
household utensils, farming implements, and all the 
property which they had hidden when the Hurons took 
them away into captivity. 

The day was set for the Moravian Indians' departure 
northward, when the war-party which had just done the 
massacre came through the town, selling the property 
of their victims (after the Indian custom) while camped 
a mile from Gnadenhiitten. The one captive whom they 
had taken alive urged the Moravian Indians to flee ; he 
was sure, he said, that the party would be tracked to that 
place and the Christian Indians involved in indiscrimi- 
nate revenge. But the people decided, after a council, 
to remain until they could gather together their property, 
" relying, in the event of the appearance of American 
militia, on their innocence and their common religion." 

It proved a vain reliance. Williamson's party reached 
the settlement and announced that they had come to 
guard the Indians into safety at Fort Pitt. The national 
assistant at Salem, John Martin, hastened to his town 
with the news ; there old Israel, a former chief, brought 
out his sacred belts of wampum, which he had received 
when a chief and which pledged the faith and friendship 

2Q2 



" The Rear-Guard of the Revolution" 

of the Americans, and reassured by the sight of these 
sacred tokens Martin and his people consented to go 
with the party to Fort Pitt. Martin, delighted with the 
kindness of the militia commander, opened his heart to 
him, telling of the hopes of the converts that they might 
have a church school in their new place of refuge ; 
" they would send to Bethlehem for teachers and minis- 
ters," he said; "did not the colonel think it a good 
plan ?" Colonel Williamson approved it, and his men, to 
whom it was mentioned, " praised the Indians for their 
piety." 

The Salem people were brought in under guard ; they 
gave their new friends their guns " for safe keeping" 
and acquiesced in the burning of their houses " to pre- 
vent war parties from harboring there ;" besides, they 
said, joyfully, had not the Christian American soldiers 
promised them a much better town where they were 
going ? Those Indians who spoke English rejoiced in 
" the opportunity to glorify their God," and preached to 
the militia. "Truly you are good Christians !" remarked 
the militiamen. The Indian boys, of whom there were 
many in the settlement, — for the harvesting party had 
consisted, after Indian custom, mainly of women and 
children, — frolicked with some of the half-grown boys 
of the frontier levy and taught them how to make bows 
and arrows. 

As the Salem people came to the bank of the stream 
opposite Gnadenhiitten, the militia seized and bound 
them, and forcing them across the river, they found the 
rest of the Indians there under guard, imprisoned in 
two houses. A rude sort of trial was then held, — or 
rather a tumultuous discussion, — in which the militia 

29^ 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

accused the Indians of having taken part in the war and 
plundered the settlements. Some articles, of those sold 
by the marauding party, were found in tlie Indians' pos- 
session, and this was thought a proof of guilt. The In- 
dians defended themselves against the charges, but in 
vain. 

Finally, Williamson — whose fault was, as Doddridge 
says, " a too easy compliance with popular opinion and 
popular prejudice" — made an attempt to save the pris- 
oners by asking a vote on tlie question whether the 
Christian Indians should be taken to Fort Pitt or put to 
death ; only eighteen of his ninet)' men voted to spare 
their lives. Opinion was dixided as to the mode of 
execution, whetlier to shut them in tlie houses and bum 
them alive, or tomahawk and scalp tliem ; the last was 
chosen in order that the scalps might be trophies of the 
campaign. 

The Indians, after solemnly protesting their innocence, 
only asked time to prepare for death. The}- passed the 
night in prayer and tlie singing of hymns (which some 
of their murderers mistook for the warriors' death chant), 
and in the morning were led out in couples from the two 
houses which the American militia had nicknamed, with 
a ferocious pleasantr}-, " tlie slaughter-houses." The 
Indian, Abraham, whose long, flowing hair promised " a 
fine scalp," was the first to be dragged out b\- a rope, 
killed, and his coveted scalp secured. 

When tlie men and boys were all killed, tlie work 
went on witli tlie women and children ; one of tlie 
women, Christiana, who had been taught at Bethlehem, 
spoke English well, and was an educated and refined 
woman, fell on her knees to Williamson and begged for 

294 



" The Rear-Guard of the Revolution" 

her Hfc ; " I cannot help }'ou," he said, coldly, turning 
away. Two boys escaped, one to die afterwards from 
the results of his scalping wound. In all there perished 
twenty-nine men, twenty-seven women, and thirty-four 
children, twelve of them babies. 

This deed was not done in the heat of passion, nor 
after innumerable provocations had been given by a 
daily slaughter such as reigned at that time on the Ken- 
tucky border ; it was performed in cold blood, after its 
subjects had been promised safe-conduct, disarmed, and 
deceived by those who pretended to be friends, protec- 
tors, and fellow-Christians. 

The militiamen returned to Western Pennsylvania 
boasting much of their deed. But no one since has felt 
any inclination to boast of the shameful and treacherous 
action of these borderers. It is a misfortune that it 
counts as Revolutionary service, and that a few of the 
names of the men who did it, with which Doddridge 
refused "to stain his page," are preserved among the 
rolls of the Pennsylvanian soldiers of the Revolution. 

The contemporaries of the murderers of Gnadenhiitten 
viewed the deed much as wc do after the lapse of a cen- 
tury. The reverend annalist of the border just quoted 
calls it "an atrocious and unqualified murder ;" Colonel 
James Smith, who had suffered many things in Indian 
captivity and was a brave and determined Indian fighter, 
named it "an act of barbarity equal to anything I ever 
knew to be committed by the savages themselves except 
the burning of prisoners," — and, as we have seen, Wil- 
liamson's men considered this method of killing, but 
relinquished it in order to get scalps. Stover, who es- 
caped from the wreck of the Crawford expedition after 

295 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

unimaginable exertions and sufferings, said, in his simple 
" Narrative," " I am far from approving the Moravian 
slaughter ;" and after speaking of the few wild Indians 
(possibly six in number) who were caught and involved 
in the general destruction. Stover continued, " But the 
putting to death of the women and children who sang 
hymns at their execution must be considered as un- 
justifiable, inexcusable homicide, and the colonel who 
commanded the part}', and who is said perseveringly, 
contrary to the remonstrance of officers present, to 
have enjoined the perpetration of the act, is a disgrace 
to the State of Pennsylvania." Colonel Gibson, who 
commanded at Fort Pitt, wrote of " the late horrid Mas- 
sacre perpetrated at the Towns on Muskingum, By a set 
of men, the most savage Miscreants that ever degraded 
human nature." It is a relief to turn from these furious 
denunciations, wrung from brave frontiersmen by the 
horror of the deed, to the words of the heathen Indians 
concerning the same slaughter : " We sought to compel 
our Christian countrymen to return to the wild sins in 
which we live ; but the great Manitou loved them too 
well ; he saw our schemes ; he saw their pious lives ; 
he took them." 

We have traced the annals of the colonial Germans 
from the peaceful idyls of Germantown and the Rosicru- 
cians beside the Wissahickon, through the Great Exodus 
of the " poor Palatines ;" we have seen the kindly 
province of Penn filling with " defenceless" Mennonites, 
the outlawed Schwenkfelder, the Dunkers and their 
strange fanatic outgrowth, the Ephrata cloister. And 
later we have seen such sturdy pioneers as Jost Heit 

296 



" The Rear-Guard of the Revolution" 

and Schley and Conrad Weiser, such saints and confes- 
gors as the exiled Salzburgers and the hopeful, fearless 
Moravians ; men like Post at the Indian council-fires, or 
Bouquet and his Royal Americans at Bushy Run break- 
ing victoriously through the ring of yelling savages. 
We have learnt the strange or pathetic adventures of 
the poor redemptioners, seen the industry of the Ger- 
man farmers, heard the clatter of the German press and 
the quaint comments of Saur and Miller on passing 
events. And, last of all, we have traced the part of 
the Germans in the Revolution — from that lad of the 
Shenandoah Valley who was a guest at the Boston Tea 
Party, and the border riflemen who "began their march 
the nearest road to Boston this day," to Peter Muhlen- 
berg leading the final assault on the British lines at 
Yorktown, the pioneers of Kentucky and Tennessee, the 
men of Clark's march to Vincennes, and the riflemen of 
King's Mountain. In these days — when a mistaken 
emphasis is put upon the purely English descent of the 
American people — it may be well to know that there 
were other than English strains in that which was to be 
the American nation ; and that besides Hollander and 
Huguenot, Swede and Creole, there were Germans who 
bore a manful part, who dared and suffered, fought and 
wrought in the making of the new Nation. 



2Q7 



CHRONOLOGICAL TABLE OF THE GERMAN COLONIAL 
EMIGRATION 

1683. Arrival of the Geniiantovvn colonists in the "Concord," October 

6(16). 

1684. The Labadists in Marj-land. 

1694. Community of " Das Weib in der Wiiste." 

1 702. Settlement on the Skippack, Montgomery County, Pennsylvania. 

1708. Kocherthal's colony at Newburg on the Hudson. 

1709. The Great Exodus. 

1709-10. Colony of Palatines settle in Ireland. 

1 7 10. Settlement of Newbern, North Carolina, under de Graffenried. 
1710. Palatine colony in New York. Settlement at Oley, Berks 

County, Pennsylvania. 

1 712. Flight of the Palatines to Schoharie. Newbem colonists go to 

Gennamia, Virginia. 

1713. First record of Germans in German Valley, New Jersey. 

1718. First emigration of the Dunkers. 

1 7 19. Law's colony on the Mississippi. 

1720. Conrad Beissel arrives in Pennsylvania. 
1723. Flight of Schoharie colonists to Tulpehocken. 

1729. Quitopahilla (Lebanon County) settlement. 

1730. Beginning of community at Ephrata. 

1 73 1. " Conewago settlements" of York County, Pennsylvania. 

1732. Purrysburg, South Carolina. Jost Heit's colony enters the 

Shenandoah Valley. Weiser made Indian interpreter for province 
of Pennsylvania. 

1733. Emigration of the Schwenkfelder. 

1734. First emigration of the Salzburgers to Georgia. 

1735. Settlement of Orangeburg District, South Carolina. Arrival of 

Schley's colony at INIonocacy (Frederick), Maryland. The 
Zenger trial. 

1736. Frederica, Georgia. "Great Embarkation" of the Salzburgers. 

First Moravian emigration to Georgia. 

1737. Saxe-Gotha, South Carolina. 

1738. Christopher Dock's school. Foundation of Saur's press. 
^739- Jonathan Hager founds Elizabeth (Hager's) Town. 

1740? First Settlement of Broad Bay (Waldoboro), Maine. Moravians 
begin settlement in Pennsylvania. 
298 



Chronological Table 

1741. Arrival of Zinzendorf. Founding of Bethlehem. 

1 742. Arrival of Muhlenberg. Zauberbiihler brings colonists to Broad Bay. 

1743. Nazareth, Pennsylvania. 

1745. Arrival of Schlatter. Beginning of Ephrata press. First edition 

of Saur's " Gemiantown Bible." Gemian Schools controversy. 

1746. Moravian settlement at Graceham, Marj'land. 

1747. Belletre's invasion of the Mohawk Valley. 

1748. Belletre's second invasion. Ephrata press prints the "Martyr- 

book." 

1749. New Germantown (Braintree), Massachusetts. 

1750. Beginning of Pennsylvania- German emigration to North Carolina. 
1753- Frankfort (Dresden), Maine. Moravians begin settlement on the 

Wachovia tract. North Carolina. 

1755. Braddock's defeat { beginning of the French and Indian War. 

1756. Fryeburg, Maine. ) 

1757. Death of the Eckerlins. Capture of Fort Duquesne. 

1758. Death of the elder Saur. Post's journeys. 

1760. Death of Conrad Weiser. New Gennantown (Braintree) colonists 
go to Broad Bay. Foundation of Heinrich Miller's press. 

1763. Stiimpel's colonists. Bouquet at Bushy Run. 

1764. The younger Saur begins " Geistliches Magazien." 

1765. Founding of the Deutsche Gesellschaft in Philadelphia. 

1766. Deutsche Gesellschaft in Charleston, South Carolina. 
1768. Death of Beissel. 

1769—70. Caspar Mansker and the " Long Hunters." 

1770. Jager in Kentucky. First emigration of Broad Bay Moravians to 
North Carolina. 

1772. Moravians found Gnadenhiitten in Ohio. 

1773. Second emigration from Broad Bay to North Carolina. 
1774-75. Germans delegates to Provincial Conventions. 

1775. Germans on Revolutionary Committees and as Associators. Col- 

lections for the poor of Boston. Riflemen from Virginia, 
Marj'land, and Pennsylvania. 

1776. Muhlenberg throws off the gown. 

1777. Christoph Ludwig appointed Superintendent of Baking in the 

Continental army. Battle of Oriskany. Arrival of Steuben. 

1778. Muhlenberg at Brandywine. "Moll Pitcher" at Monmouth. 

Clark's expedition against Vincennes. 

1779. Publication of Steuben's " Rules." 

1780. Death of De Kalb at Camden. King's Mountain. 

1782. Battle of the Blue Licks. Gnadenhiitten massacre. 

1783. End of the Revolutionary War and of the Colonial period. 

299 



LIST OF WORKS CONSULTED 

I. GENERAL SUBJECTS. 

Der Deutsche Pionier. Cincinnati, 1869-S5. 

Deutsch-americanisches Magazin. H. A. Ratterman, editor. Cincinnati, 
1886. 

Goebel : Geschichte des christlichen Lebens in westphal-rheinischen 
Pfalz. Coblenz, 3 vols., 1852-1862. 

Hallesche Nachrichten. Halle a. S., 1787. 

The same, partially republished, with notes by W. J. IMann and W. Ger- 
mann. Allentown and Halle, 1886-92. 

The same, partially translated by J. Oswald. Philadelphia, 1880-82. 

The same, partially translated by Schaeffer. Reading, 1882. 

Loher : Die Deutschen in America. Gottingen, 1855. 

Pennsylvania Geniian Society; Proceedings and Addresses. 1891-98. 

Pennypacker : Historical and Biographical Sketches. Philadelphia, 
1883. 

Schlosser: Geschichte des i8ten Jahrhunderts. 

The same, translated by D. Davison. London, 1843-52. 

Seidensticker : Bilder aus der deutsch-pennsylvanischen Geschichte. 
New York, 1885. 

Seidensticker : Geschichte der Deutsche Gesellschaft. Philadelphia, 
1876. 

Walton and Binimbaugh : Stones of Pennsylvania. American Book Com- 
pany. New York, Cincinnati, and Chicago, 1877. 

IL SPECIAL SUBJECTS. 

Alice Morse Earle : Newspaper Women of Colonial Times. Lidependent, 
August 15, 1895. 

C. W. Buttei-field : History of the Girtys. Cincinnati, 1890. 

Rupp : History of Berks County, Pennsylvania. . Lancaster, 1844. 

Kercheval : History of the Valley of Virginia. Winchester, 1833. 

Doddridge : Notes on the Settlement and Indian Wars of the Western 
Parts of Virginia and Pennsylvania. Wellsburgh, 1S24. 

Proceedings of the Society for History of Germans in Maryland. 18S7. 

Scharf : History of Western Maryland. Philadelphia, 1882. 

300 



List of Works Consulted 

Scharf: History of Maryland. Baltimore, 1879. 

McMahon : Historical View of the Government of Marj'land. Baltimore, 

1831. 

Dictionary of National Biography. New "\"ork and Lx)ndon, 1892 — arts. 
Law of Lauriston and Oglethorpe. 

Bemheim : History of German settlements and of Lutheran Church in 
North and South CaroUna. Philadelphia, 1872. 

Memorial of Jean Pierre Pury in behalf of the colonization of South 
Carohna. London, 1724; reprinted, Augusta, Georgia, 1880. 

Mills (?) : Atlas of South Carohna. 1826. 

Howard M. Jenkins: The Schwenkfelder. Reprinted from "Friends' 
Quarterly Examiner," London, 1896. 

Stevens : History of Georgia. New York, 1847-59. 

He watt : Historical Account of Colonies of South Carolina and Georgia. 
London, 1779. 

Historical Collections of South Carolina. New York, 1836. 

Dalcho : History of Episcopal Church in South Carolina. Charleston, 
1820. 

Howe : History of Presbyterian Church in South Carolina. Columbia, 
1870. 

\N'hitney (Edson L. ) : Government of Colony of South Carolina: (J. 
H. U. studies). Baltimore, 1895. 

Mills: Statistics of South Carolina. Charleston, 1826. 

Egle : History of Pennsylvania. Harrisburg, 1876. 

William Gilmore Sims : History of .South Carolina (contains Mitchell's 
map, 1844). Charleston, 1842. 

Joseph ^Villiamson : Bibliography of Maine. Portland, 1896. 

Maine Historical Collections, Vols. V. and VI. 

John \V. Jordan : Moravian Mission at Broad Bay, Maine. Bethlehem, 
1891. 

Williamson : History of Maine. Hallowell, 1832. 

Eaton: Annals of Warren [Maine] . Hallowell, 1 851 ; (second edition, 
enlarged) 1877. 

Pattee : History of Braintree [Massachusetts]. Q«incy, 1878. 

Holmes : American Annals. Cambridge, Massachusetts, 1805. 

J. G. Holland : History of Western Massachusetts. Springfield, 1855. 

C. Heydrick : Genealogical Record of the Descendants of the .Schwenk- 
felder. Manayrmk (Pennsylvania), 1879. 

Kurtz ( translated by J. Robertson Nicoll ) : Church History. New York 
and London. 

Barclay : Religious Societies of the Commonwealth. London, 1876. 

: Kaspar V. Schwenkfeld and die Schwenkfelder. Lauban, i860. 

301 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

Sydney George Fisher : Making of Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, 1896. 

Journals of Von Reck and Boltzius. London, 1734. 

Urlsperger: Ausfuhrliche Nachrichten von den Salzburgischen Emigranten. 
Halle, 1735. 

Henry E. Jacobs : History of the Lutheran Church in the United States. 
(Vol. IV. of American Church Histoiy Series. ) New York, 1S93. 

Strobel : History of the Salzburgers. Baltimore, 1855. 

Hazelius : Histoiy of the American Lutheran Church. Zanesville, 1846. 

Jones : Dead Towns of Georgia. ( In Georgia Historical Collections, 
Vol. IV.) Savannah, 1878. 

W. J. Mann : Life of H. M. Muhlenberg. Philadelphia, 18S7. 

M. L. Stoever : Life and Times of Muhlenberg. Philadelphia, 18S3. 

[Helmuth] : Denkmal der Liebe u. Achtung. Philadelphia, 1788. 

C. Z. Weiser : Life of Conrad Weiser. Reading, 1876. 

W. L Montgomery : Lecture on the Life and Times of Conrad Weiser. 
Reading, n. d. 

C. Fr. Post: Journals. (Reprinted in Rupp's History of Western Penn- 
sylvania. Pittsburg and Harrisburg, 1846. ) 

Kapp : Die Deutschen im Staate New York. New York, 186S. 

Pritts: Border Warfare. Abingdon, Virginia, 1849. 

Frontier Forts of Pennsylvania. Printed by the State, 1896. 

Williamson : Historj' of North Carolina. Philadelphia, 1812. 

Ramsay: History of South Carolina. Charleston, 1809. 

Rev. William Smith : Historical Account of Bouquet's expedition against 
Ohio Indians. (Republished in Ohio Vallev Historical Series. Cincinnati, 
1868.) 

Cort : Colonel Heniy Bouquet and his Campaigns. Lancaster, Pennsyl- 
vania, 1S83. 

Seidensticker : First Centurj- of German Printing in America. Philadel- 
phia, 1893. 

Harbaugh: Life of Michael Schlatter. Philadelphia,! 1857. 

H. W. Smith ; Life and Correspondence of Rev. William Smith. Phila- 
delphia, 1889. 

L. T. Reichel : Early History' of Moravians in North America (Vol. HI. 
of Moravian Historical Society Transactions). Nazareth, Pennsylvania, 
1888. 

Concise History of Unitas Fratrum. London, 1862. 

De Schweinitz : Moravian IManual. Bethlehem, 1869. 

E. H. Reichel, editor : Plistorical Sketch of Church and IMissions of the 
Moravians. Bethlehem, 1S4S. 

L. T. Reichel : Moravians in North Carolina. Salem, North Carolina, 
1857. 

;?o2 



List of Works Consulted 

Loskiel : History of Missions of the United Brethren to the Indians. 
Translated by C. I. Latrobe. London, 1794. 

J. G. Rosengarten : German Soldier in the Wars of the United States. 
Second edition, Philadelphia, 1890. 

Parkman : Conspiracy of Pontiac. Boston, 1855. 
\ Rupp : Thirty Thousand Names of German Emigrants. Philadelphia, 
1876. 

G. Mittleberger : Journey to Pennsylvania. Translated by C. T. Eben. 
Philadelphia, 1898. 

Bruce : Economic History of Virginia in the Seventeenth Century. New 
York and London, 1896. 

T. F. Chambers : Early Germans of New Jersey. Dover, 1895. 

E. K. Martin: The Mennonites. Philadelphia, 1883. 

J. F. Sachse : German Pietists of Provincial Pennsylvania. Philadelphia, 
1895. 

M. D. Learned: Pennsylvania-German Dialect. Baltimore, 1889. 

Rupp: History of Dauphin County, etc. Lancaster, 1846. 

R. E. Thompson ; German Mystics as American Colonists. In Penn 
Monthly for August and .September, 1 87 1 . 

Bancroft: History of the United States. New York, 1888. 

John Esten Cooke: Virginia (in American Commonwealths Series). 
Boston, 1883. 

Waddell : Annals of Augusta County, Virginia, Richmond, 1886. 

McSherry: History of Maryland. Baltimore, 1849. 

Case of the German emigrants settled in the Briti.sh Colonies of Pennsyl- 
vania and the back parts of Maryland, Virginia, etc. London, 1754. 

Burk, continued by Jones and Girardin : History of Virginia. Petersburg, 
Virginia, 1804-16. 

Jefferson: Notes on State of Virginia. Boston, 1802; new edition, 

1853- 

Charles B. Coale : Life and Adventures of Wilbum Waters, embracing 
the hi.story of Southwestern Virginia. Richmond, 1878. 

Benton : History of Herkimer County and Upper Mohawk Valley. 
Albany, 1 856. 

William W. Campbell : Annals of Tryon County, New York. New 
York, 1 83 1. 

Simms : Frontiersmen of New York. Albany, 18S2-83. 

Shaler : Kentucky (in American Commonweallhs Series). Boston, 
1888. 

Roosevelt': Winning of the West. Vols. I. and II. New York and 
London, 1889. 

Kapp : Life of Frederick William von Steuben. New York, 1859. 

303 



The Germans in Colonial Times 

[Von Steuben] : Regulations for the Order and Discipline of the Troops 
of the United States. Philadelphia, 1779. 

Kapp : Leben des Generals Johann Kalb. Stuttgart, 1S62. 

Charles Goepp : translation of the same. Privately printed. New York, 
1870. 

The same. New York (Holt Oic Co. ), 1SS4. 

Linn and Egle : Pennsylvania in the Revolution. Printed by the State, 
1S90-95. 

Schreiben des Evangelischen Lutlierischen und Reformirten Kirchen-raths 
wie auch den Beamten der Teutschen Gesellschaft an die Teutschen Ein- 
wohner der Provinzen von New York und Nord Carolina. Philadelphia, 

1775- 
J. H. Dubbs: Historic Manual of the (German) Reformed Church. 

Lancaster, 1SS5. 

Lee and Agnew : Historical Record of the Cit)' of Savannah. Savannah, 
1S69. 

Ramsay: Annals of Tennessee. Philadelphia, 1S53. 

Ha\-wood : Historvof Tennessee. Nashville, 1S91 (reprint of edition of 
1S23J. 

Putnam: History of Middle Tennessee. Nashville, 1S59. 

Centenary- of Kentucky. Louisville, 1S92. 

Filson : Discover}-, Setdement, and present State of Kentucky. London, 

1793- 

Green : Historic Families of Kentucky. Cincinnati. 1SS9. 

Collins : Historical Sketches of Kentucky. ^L^ysville (Kentucky"), 1S47. 

H. Marshall; Historj- of Kentucky-. Frankfort (KenUicky), 1S24. 

Mann Butler: Histor\- of Kentucky. Louisville, 1S34. 

Allen : History of Kentucky. Louisville. 1S72. 

Lewis Collins, revised by R. H. Collins : Histor}- of Kentucky. Coving- 
ton (Kentucky), 1S7S. 

Speed: The \Mldemess Road. Louisville, 18S6. 

Morehead : Settlement of Kentucky. Frankfort (Kentucky), 1S40. 

[Benjamin Rush] : Life and Character of Christopher Ludwick. Re- 
published in report of Philadelphia Charin.- Schools. Philadelphia, 1S60. 
-^Hildebum : A Century of IVinting ; the Issues of the Press in Pennsyl- 
vania. 16S5-17S4. Philadelphia. 1885-^6. 

Chronicon Ephratense (translated by J- Max Hark). Lancaster. 1SS9. 

Sanford H. Cobb : The Stor\- of the Palatines. New York. 1S97. 

Abel Stevens : History of the Methodist Episcopal Church in the United 
States. New York, 1864. 

Henrv- A. Muhlenberg: Life of Geneml Peter Muhlenberg. Philadel- 
phia, 1S49. 



List of Works Consulted 

Henry Cabot Lodge : The Story of the Revolution. New York, 1898. 

J. C. Stover: Kurzte Nachricht von einer Evangel iscli- 1. uthcrischen 
Deutschen Gcmeinde in Virginien. Hannover, 1737. 

M. V. Smith: Governors of Virginia. Washington, 1893. 

Norris: History of the Lower (Shenandoah) Valley. Chicago, 1890. 

Fiske : Old Virginia and her Neighbors. Boston, 1897. 

R. A. Brock, editor : Official Letters of Governor Alexander Spotswood. 
Richmond, 1882-85. 

J. H. Wheeler : Historical Sketches of North Carolina. Philadelpliia, 
:8si. 

William Henry F'oole : Sketches of North Carolina. New York, 1S46. 

C. L. Hunter: Sketches of Western North Carolina. Raleigh, 1877. 

J. Hanno Ueiler : Zur Geschichte der deutschen Kirchen-Gemcinde im 
)taate Louisiana. New Orleans, 1894. 

Gayarrd' : History of Louisiana. New York, 1854. 

Edmund de Schweinitz : Life and Times of David Zeisberger. I'hila- 
lelphia, 1S70. 

NaiTatives of the Perils and Sufferings of John Slover and Dr. Knight. 
"incinnati, 1867 ; reprinted from Nashville edition of 1843. 
k^The Tryal of John Peter Zenger of New York, Printer ; who was lately 
ried & ac(|uitled for printing & publishing a libel against the Government, 
second edition. London, 1738. 

David Schenck : North Carolina : 1780-81. Raleigh, 1889. 

Lyman C. Draper: King's Mountain and its Heroes. Cincinnati, 1881. 

Benjamin Rush : Manners of the German Inhabitants of Penn.sylvania. 
Republished from edition of 1789, with notes by L D. Rupp. ) 1875. 

Cecil B. Hartley : Life of Lewis Wetzel ; also of Kenton and other 
heroes of the West. Philadelphia, i860. 

James Adair: History of the American Indians. London, i775- 

Clark's Campaign in the Illinois; containing Bowman's Journal. (Ohio 
Galley History .Scries, No. 3.) Cincinnati, i860. 

Hawks, Swain, and Graham : Revolutionary History of North Carolina, 
laleigh and New York, 1843. 



305 



INDEX 



¥¥ 



Alamance, 236 

Albany, 54, 85, 190, 191, 236 

Allegheny River, 198 

Allentown, 252 

Anabaptists, 27, 93, 164 

Andre, 273 

Andrustown, 264 

Anne, Queen, 59, 63, 67, 68, 71, 186 

Armand, 246 

Armbrusters, 164-165 

Armistead, 7 

Arndt, 194 

Arnold, 245 

Arnold, Jonathan (see Steuben, 

Jonathan), 273, 274 
Aughwick, 190 
Aux Miami, 283 

Baden, 21, 69 

Baltimore, 224, 233, 256 

Bancroft, 239, 270 

Bayreuth, 274 

Bedinger, David, 284 

Bedinger, Geo. Michael, 268, 283- 
285 

Bedinger, Henry, 268, 269, 284 

Beissel, 99, 100-104, 152-154, 163, 
164, 190, 253 

Bell, 259 

Belletre, 204 

Berlin, 231 

Berne, 72, 95, 122, 206 

Bethabara, 181, 182, 200, 252 

Bethania, 182 

Bethlehem, 166, 173, 174, 176, 178- 
180, 183, 187, 192, 193, 198, 200, 
252, 253, 256, 257, 293, 294 

Biloxi, New, 91 

Bingaman, 203 

Blue Licks, 284, 285 

Blue Ridge, 191, 281 

"Blutige Schauplatz" ("Martyr- 
Book"), 164 

Boeckels, 252 



Boehme, 13, 42, 43, 47 
Bohemia Manor, 39, 40, 41, 42 
Bohemian Brethren, 168 
Bohler, 171, 172 
Bolzius, 126, 144, 149, 152 
Boone, Daniel, 278, 280, 283 
Boston, 100, 132, 133, 138, 155, 158, 

243, 245, 255, 267, 268, 270, 284, 

297 
Bouquet, 186, 195, 206-214, 261, 297 
Bowling Green, 281 
Bowman, 115, 281-^ 
Bowman, Abraham, 269, 278 
Bowman, John, 278, 281-283, 285 
Braddock, 137, 159, 186, 187, 191, 

198, 206, 210, 211, 261, 286 
" Braddock' s War" (see War, 

French and Indian) 
Bradford, William, 225 
Braintree, 130, 135, 136, 164 
Brandywine, 246, 252, 253, 270, 284 
Brant, 259, 264 
Broad Bay (see Waldoboro) 
Brodhead, 291 
Brooke, 270 
Buffalo Creek, 141 
Bullitt's Lick, 286 
Bumgardner, 267 
Burgoyne, 259, 264 
Burnet, Bishop, 67 
Burr, 241 

Bushy Run, 210, 297 
Bussey, 194 

Cahokia, 281 

Cambridge, 245, 256, 268 

Camden, 276 

Canada, 205, 209, 245, 259 

Canajoharie, 86 

Carlisle, 212, 213, 250 

Catholics, 14, 19, 62, 70, 71, 92, 106, 

107, no, 131, 143, 150 
Charleston, 123, 126, 129, 145, 149, 

224, 237, 287 



307 



Index 



Cherry Valley, 259 

Chillicothe.Old, 2S3, 2S4 

Choiseul, 275 

Chrisman, 115 

Cincinnati, 2S0 

Clark, 240, 277, 2S1, 2S2, 297 

Clause, 225, 260 

Clay, 285 

Coffman, 2S5 

" Concord," 29, 31 

Conestoga, 100-2, 114, 190 

Conestoga wagons, 234 

" Conewago Settlements," 115 

Connecticut, 175, 176, 177, 264, 273, 

274 
Connolly, Dr., 256 
Conococheague, iiS, 159 
Conway, 271 
Coonrod, 280 

Cornwallis, 236, 274, 2S7, 2S8 
C6te d'Allemande, 91 
Counce, 236 
Cowpens, 257 
Crawford expedition, 295 
Crefeld, 22, 24, 26, 28, 31, 99 
Crell, or Crellins, 134-136, 164 
Crepps, 285 
Cresap, iiS 
Crist, 285, 286 
Crown Point, 208, 236 
Cuba, 209 

Cumberland Mountains, 279 
Cumberland Riyer, 279 
Custer, General, 7 

De Broglie. Due, 276 
Deckhard rifles, 2S9 
Declaration of Independence, 221, 

239, 241, 275 
De Graflfenried, 72, 77, 180 
De Heer, 246, 247 
De Kalb (or Kalb), 274-276 
Detroit, 208, 209, 292 
De Turck, 89. 175 
De Watteyille. 184 
Diffendorf, 262 

Dock, Christopher, 111-113, 161 
Doddridge, 116, 200, 201, 294, 295 
Dunkers"(or Tunkers), 98-100, 154, 

155, 150, 161, 190, 230, 296 
Dunmore, Lord, 256, 27S 
Duponceau, 272, 273 

East Camp, 81. 82, 205 
Easton. 196, 197, 252 
Ebenezer, 123, 126, 145-149, 151. 152, 
234, 237 



508 



Eckart, 12 

Eckerlins, 50, 101-103 

Edelin, 255 

Elizabeth Town (see Hagerstown) 

Emans, 179 

Embury, Philip, 78, 79 

Emraitsburg, 118 

England, 59. 62, 63, 64, 65, 66, 68, 

71, 80, 85, 125, 144, 145 
Ephrata, 6, 50, 94, 99-104, 114, 153, 

154, 162-164, 166, 167, 186, 187, 

252-254, 296 
Episcopal Church, 160 
Ettwein, Bishop, 140, 1S3, 252 
Everhart, 257, 258, 280 

Falkner, Daniel, 33, 34, 46, 53-55 

Falkner, Justus, 53, 55, 60 

Ferguson, 240, 28S, 289 

Fessenden, 13S 

Flying Camp, 244, 249, 257 

Forbes, 197-199, 207, 236 

Fornej', 2S8, 290 

Fort Augusta, 199 

Fort Bedford. 209, 210 

Fort Daviion, 266 

Fort Duquesne, 1S6, 197, 199, 207, 

230 
Fort Frederick, 159 
Fort Le Boeuf, 209 
Fort Ligonier, 208, 210 
Fort Massachusetts, 135 
Fort Necessity, 190 
Fort Pitt, 207, 211, 213-291, 294, 296 
Fort Plain, 259 
Fort Stanwix, 259, 260 
Fort Washington, 257, 268, 2S4 
Fort Wayne, 2S3 
Fort William Henry. 208 
Franckes, the, 15 
Frankfort, 22. 23. 58, 64, 134, 137 
Frankfort (Maine), or Dresden, 

135. 137. 138 
Frankfort Company, 24, 33, 34, 43, 

54 
Franklin, 136, 153, 157, 161, 165, 166, 

174, 1S6, 191 
Frederica, 142, 146. 147. 149, 23S 
Frederick (^Iar^iand), iii, 115, 

117, 167, 257 
Frederick the Great, loS, 12S, 247, 

248, 271, 272, 274 
Friedberg, 183 
Friedenshiitten, 176 
Friedland. 183 
Frietchie. Barbara. 7 
Frj-e (or Frey), 13S 



Index 



Fryeburg, 138 

Furly, Benjamin, 23-25, 54 

Gates, General, 244, 255, 264, 274, 

276 
Geibs, the, 233 
Georgia, 119, 120, 122, 142, 144, 146- 

148, 151, 155, 16S-171, 185, 235, 

237, 238, 279 
German Flats, 86, 204, 205, 264 
Germania, 76, 77 
German Schools, 157-160, 186 
" German Societies," 135, 217, 223, 

224, 227, 240, 248 
Germantown, 26-35, 45> 46, 47, 50, 

93, 99, 112, 113, 152-157, 160, 

161, 162, 164, 166, 167, 171, 172, 

198, 215, 232, 243, 246, 252, 296 
Germantown Vallej^ N. J., 52-57, 

159 
Giessendanners, 124-5 
Gnadenhiitten (Ohio), 240, 290-296 
Gnadenhiitten on the Mahanoy, 

177, 178, 192, 193 
Gobrecht, 242 
Goethe, 168 
Graceham, 118, 179 
Greene, 269 

Greenland (or Hope), 56 
Gronau, 144 
Groot, Gerhard, 13 
Gross, 7 
Guilford Court House, 290 

Hagar (see Hager) 

Hagedorn, Mary, 265 

Hager, Captain, 264 

Hager (or Hagar), Jonathan, 118, 

254, 255 
Hager, Jonathan, Jr., 255, 256. 
Hager, Rosina, 255 
Hagerstown, 118, 255 
Halle, 15, 144, 148, 170, 184, 220 
Halle Reports (or Hallesche Nach- 

richten), 185, 219 
Hambriglit, Frederick, 2S8-290 
Hambright, John, 244, 288 
Hamilton, Mrs. Alexander, 251 
Hamilton, Andrew, 226, 227 
Hand, Colonel, 245 
Hanna's-town, 231 
Hard Labor Creek, 128, 129 
Harrod, 278 
Harrodsburg, 278, 281 
Harrod's Station, 280, 281 
Hartmann, 267 
Hartranit, Governor, no 



Harttafel, 233 

Hasselbach, Widow, 233 

Havana, 209 

Hayne, 287 

Heck, Barbara, 78, 79 

Heckewelder, 7, 291 

Heerman, Augustine, 39 

Heerman, Ephraim, 39, 40 

Heidelberg, 18, 99, 104 

Heit, Jost, 115, 116, 200, 281, 296 

Helfensteins, 228, 229, 237, 242, 

269 
Helm, 281-283 
Helmer, 260, 264 
Helmuth, 222 
Hendricks, 246 
Henry, 245 
Henry, Patrick, 281 
Herkim.er, 7, 86, 204, 205, 258-263 
Herkimer (New York), 86, 204, 

266 
Hermsdorf, 146, 147 
Hessians, 242, 249, 288 
Hiester, 255 
Hillegas, 247 

Hite, Abram, 278, 280, 281 
Hite, Isaac, 278, 2S0, 281 
Holder, 285 
Holland, 27, 52, 64, 94, 95, 108, 132, 

158, 220 
Holmes, Dr. O. W., 158 
Holston settlements, 279 
Hope (North Carolina), 183 
Howe, 241 

Huguenots, 19, 63, 89, 175, 297 
Hulse, 268 

Hunter, Governor, 79-85, 225 
Hus, John, 105, 148, 168 

" Illinois country," 240, 277, 281 

" Imitation of Christ," 13 

Indians, 5, 46, 68, 73-76, 82-84, 86- 
88, 103, 132, 134, 137, 175-178, 182, 
186, 187-205, 207, 210-214, 230, 231, 
244, 258-267, 277-280, 283, 285, 286, 
291-297 

" Inspired," the, 100, 154 

Ireland, Germans in, 77, 78, 90 

Irish, 119, 221, 230 

Irvine, 250 

Jager, 230, 277, 278 
Jansen, Reynier, 31, 46 
John of Leyden, 27 
Johnson family, 240, 264 
Johnson, Sir William, 190, 224, 225, 
259-261 



509 



Index 



Kalb (De Kalb), 270 

Kalteisen, 232, 237 

Karl Ludwig, iS. 19. 63 

Kaskaskia, 2S3 

Kelpius. 33, 43-4S. 31. 53, 152 

Kemper, Governor. 77 

Kenton, 27S, 2S7 

Kentucky, 231. 240, 26S, 270, 277, 

27S, 2S3, 2S4. 295, 297 
Kercheval, 200 
King's ^lountain. 240, 2SS-290, 

297 
Kingston on the Hudson, 1S5 
Kittaning, 196 
Kittatinny, 1S5, 193, 230 
Klein, 233 

Kocherthal, 5S-60, 63, 79 
Koster, 46, 49 
Krisheim, 22, 23, 24, 25 
Kunze, 220 
Kurtz, 232 
Kuskuskee, 199 



Labadie, Jean de, 22, 36, 37, 41 
Labadists, 22, 36-41, 42 
Lafayette, 252, 256, 270, 275 
Lancaster, 103, 159. 167, iSS, 212, 

242, 252. 271, 2S9 
Lauck, 26S 

Law, John, 5, 90, 91, 121 
Lebanon, 1S5, 195 
Leidy, 7 
Lermond, 236 
"Leydensdorp," 136 
Licking River, 27S, 2S4 
Linganore, 255 
Lititz, 179, 252, 253 
Livingston. Robert, Si, 1S7, 216 
Logan, 240 
Loher, 52. 65 
Longl'ellow. 257 
" Long Hunters," 279 
Long Island, 244 
Loufs XIV., 17, iS, 19, 44, 62 
Louisburg, 131, 133, 1S6, 20S 
Louisiana, 90, 92 
Louisville, 27S 

Ludwig, Christoph, 232, 247-250 
Ludwig, Maria (see "Pitcher 

Moll") 
Ludwig (of Waldoboro), 235, 

236 
Luther, 13. 27, 105, 143, 14S, 22S, 

237, 266 
Luther. Heinrich Ehrenfried, 134. 



I Lutherans, 14, 19, 42, 49, 53, 54, 58, 

I 59, 60, 63, 6S. 72, 106, 119, 126, 131, 

141-143. 147. 150. 157, 160. 16S-170, 

175. 1S4, 1S5-190. 194, 223, 232, 

240, 269 

Mack, Alexander. 9S 

Maine, 130-132. 137, 140, 1S3, 216, 

235. 236 
Manheim, 232, 271 
Mansker. 27S-2S0 
Mantz, Felix, 27 
Martin, 292. 293 
" Martvr-Book," 164, 167 
Maryland, 116, 117. 119, 120, 149, 

179, 1S5, iSi!. 206. 211. 214. 227, 

231, 239, 245, 254-25S, 267, 281 
"Mason and Dixon's Line." iiS 
Massachusetts, 130, 131, 133, 135, 

137, id|, 233 
Massanutton Mountain, 201, 203 
Matthiii, Conrad, 50, 51, 102 
McDonald. Captain, 266 
Mechanicstown, iiS 
" Mecklenburg Declaration," 2SS 
Melsheimer, 6 
Menno, Simon, 27, 36 
Mennonites. 6. 21. 22. 24-2S, 32. 33, 

36, 72. 93-9S, 105, III, 112, 164, 

194. 202, 231, 232. 247. 24S, 296 
Merckley, Catherine. 265 
Merlau, Eleanora von, 15, 23-25 
Methodists, 7S, 79. 25S, 2S0 
Miller, Heinrich, 165-167, 221, 241. 

297 
Miller, Peter, 101-102, 114, 164. 253, 

254 
Mississippi Valley. 277 
Mittelberger. 217-220 
Mohawk Valley, 86, 204, 205, 240, 

258-267 
Monmouth, 7, 250, 251 
Monocacy, 116-119. 149, 159, 179 
Montcalm, 20S 
Montgomen,-, 246 
Montreal, 82, 103, 186 
Moravians, 5. 6. 50, 51, 56, 118, 140, 

141, 146, 147, 165. 166, 16S-183, 

184. 189, 190. 192. 10S-200, 207. 

252. 253, 290-297 
Morgan, 257. 269 
Morgan's Spring, 268 
Muhlenberg. General, 5, 115. 269, 

270, 297 
Muhlenberg, Rev. H. M.. 4S. 56, 

87, 88. 89. 174. 1S4-1S7, 195, 212, 

214. 217, 218, 222. 243 



Index 



Muhlenbergs, 6, 243 
Miinster, 12, 27 
Muskingum, 195, 212, 296 
Mysticism, 12, 21 

Nashville, 278, 2S0 
Nazareth, 172, 173, 179, 192, 193 
Nevelling, 57, 243 
Nevvbern, 73-75, 77> 180 
Newberry district, 127, 128 
Newburg on the Hudson, 58 
New England, 122, 130-141, 186 ] 
New Germantown, (Massachu- , 
setts), 135-137, 233 I 

New Germantown (New Jersey), j 

55, 56, 57 i 

New Germantown (Virgmia), 203 
New Hampshire, 138 
New Jersey, 52, 54, 184, 247, 252 
New Orleans, 91 
New Providence, 217 
New Windsor, 125, 127, 130 
New York (city), 53, 54, 60, 80, 82, 

85, 188, 224, 226 
New York (State), 52, 59, 64, 75, 

77, 78, 79, 88, 89, 90, 122, 159, 175, 

176, 177, 184, 186, 190, 204, 216, 

224, 239, 240, 258-267 
Niagara, 208 
Nitschmann, 146 
North Carolina, 73,76, 90, 120, 128, 

137, 140, 141, 150-152, 155, 180, 

184, 185, 200, 231, 236, 240, 252, 

277, 279, 287, 288 
North Mountain, 185 
Nova Scotia, 133, 134 

Octorara, 232 

Oglethorpe, 122, 142, 144-148, 170, 

171, 228 
Ohio, Falls of, 278 
Ohio River, 190, 198, 207, 278 
Ohio (State), 178, 291 
Ole'y, 100, 114, 175 
Onas, 204, 230 
Onontio, 204 

Orangeburg, 124-126, 149, 228 
Oriskany, 6, 7, 86, 260 
Orndorff, 255 

Orndorff, Mary Madeline, 255 
Orwig, 230 
Oswego, 260 

Paine, "Tom," 241 

Palatinate, Rhenish, 17-20, 25, 58, 

59, 61, 63, 64, 69, 87, 89, 95, 96, 122, 

123, 131, 134, 158 

3' 



Palatines, 6, 18, 52, 58, 61, 62, 63, 
65-70, 72-74, 77, 79, 81, 82, 84-87, 
99, 1 16-120, 123, 128, 132, 133, 136, 
144, 148, 152, 187, 204, 205, 225- 
228, 296 

Parkman, 6, 7, 208 

Pastorius, 6, 24, 25, 28-34, 36, 43, 44, 

54, 55, 93, III, 152 

Penn, John, 188, 223 

Penn, William, 6, 21, 22-25, 28, 29, 
32, 35, 3^, 90, 97, 113, 141, 142, 181, 
216, 230 

Pennsylvania, 5, 11, 15, 16,21,23- 
25, 29, 43, 46, 49, 50, 55, 60, 85-87, 
89, 90, 94-97, 99-100, 105, 108-111, 
115-118, 123, 132, 135-141, 142, 148, 

149, 151, 152, 154-160, 163, 164, 
167, 171, 172, 174, 175, 182, 187, 
188, 190-200, 206, 208, 211, 215-217, 
219, 224, 227-230, 232, 239-254, 256, 
267, 271, 284, 287, 288, 291, 295, 
296 

" Pennsylvania Dutch," 150 
Pennsylvania Germans, 6, 89, 116, 

150, 152, 153, 166, 167, 181, 221, 
233, 234, 240, 241, 244, 247, 250, 
251, 281, 289 

" Pennsylvania Pilgrim," 5 

Pennsylvania, University of, 186 

Pennypacker, Judge, 32 

Pensacola, 214 

Pequae, 93-97, 99, 100, ii4 

Petersen, Professor, 23, 24, 43 

Pfantz, 230 

Phifer, 288 

Philadelphia, 42, 44, 45, 51, 52, 94, 

108, 114, 134, 135, 159, 165, 167, 

179, 185, 194, 207-209, 218, 220, 

222, 224, 226, 227, 233, 238, 240, 

241, 243, 247, 248, 284 
Philadelphian Society, 22, 42, 44, 

50 
Pickens, 287 
Pietism, 12, 15, 16, 21, 22,42, 59,60, 

99, 168, 170, 184 
" Pitcher, Moll," 7, 250, 251 
Pittsburg, 199 
Plockhoy, Cornelis, 32, 33 
Pontiac's conspiracy, 209-211 
Post, Christian Frederick, 7, 176, 

198-200, 207, 297 
Presbyterians, 159, 174, 239, 290 
Prevost, 237 
Prideaux, 208 
Princeton, 246 
Prussia, 143 
Pulaski, 246, 256, 257 



Index 



Purry, Jean Pierre, 121, 122 
Purysburg, 121-123, 142, 145, 149 

Quakers, 22, 47, 105, 157, 159, 160, 

162, 216 
Quebec, 186, 208, 209, 241, 246, 269, 

275 

Rabenhorst, 237 
Ramsour's Mills, 2S7, 288 
Ranch, 175 

Reading. 194, 252, 255 
Reck, Baron von, 144-146 
Redemptioners, 127, 148, 215-229, 

297 
Reformation, 13, 106, 263, 266 
Reformed Church, 14, 19, 52, 59, 

63, 68, 116, 126, 131, 150, 157, 158, 

160, 174, 184, 240 
Regina Hartman, 195, 212-214 
Regulators, 236 
Reichelsdorfer family, 195-196 
Reinhardt, 2S7, 288 
Revolution, 57, 109, 123, 129, 140, 

149, 151, 154, 156, 162, 165, 183, 

186, 229, 231-233, 235-276, 279, 281, 

290, 291, 295,297 
Revolution, French, 273 
Rhinebeck, 81 

Rhineland, the, 12, 15, 17, 64, 79 
Richtmeyer, Mrs., 257 
Rittenhouse, 31, 247, 248 
Rock, the " Inspired Saddler," 15, 

100 
Rosencrantz, 259 
Rosicrucians, 6, 21, 42-45, 296 
Royal American Regiment, 1S6, 

206-214, 297 
Rush, Dr., 234 

St. Clair, 286 

St. Leger, 258, 260 

Salem (North Carolina), 40, iSo, 

183, 236 
Salem (Ohio), 292, 293 
Salzburgers, 123, 142-149, 168, 170, 

228, 237, 297 
Sandusky, 208 
Santec River, 122, 125 
Saratoga, 256, 264 
Saur, Christoph, the elder, loi, 112, 

153-160, 162-167, 174, 186, 217, 297 
Saur, Christoph, the younger, 156, 

160-162, 164, 167 
Savannah, 145-149, 229, 237-239 
Savannah (River), 121, 122, 125, 

145. 147 



Saxe, John Godfrey, 136 
Saxe-Gotha, 126, 127, 130, 149, 151, 

228 
Schaeffer, "Dr.," 139-140 
Schaefferstown, 115 
Schell, 265-267 
Schellsbush, 265, 267 
Schlatter, 56, 116, 158-160, 184, 207, 

243 
Schley, Admiral, 117 
Schley, John Thomas, iii, 116, 117, 

159,' 255, 297 
Schmick, 253 
Schoharie, 83, 85, 86, 87, 89, 114, 

188, 205, 230, 258, 259, 264, 265 
Schuyler, Elizabeth, 259 
Schwarzenau, 98, 154 
Schwenkfeld, Caspar, 105, 106 
Schwenkfelder, 6, 105-110, 168-170, 

296 
Scilly Islands, 72, 77 
Scotch-Irish, 150, 195, 231, 288, 290 
Seidensticker, Dr., 24, 104, 153 
Seitz, 288 

Selig, Johann, 46, 48-51 
Shamokin, 177, 188, 193 
Shekellamy, 188 
Shekomeko, 175, 176, 198 
Shepherdstown, 115, 149, 268, 284 
Shippen, Dr., 252 
Sigler, 202 

Silesia, 17, 105, 106, 108, 109 
Six Nations, 75, 188, 189, 204, 246 
Sluyter, 36, 38, 39, 40, 41 
Smith, James, 296 
Smith, Rev. William, 159-161, 186, 

210 
Soelle, 140, 183 
Somerset, 230, 231 
South Carolina, 120-130, 137, 149, 

151, 155, 183-185, 216, 227, 231, 

238, 277 
Spain, 142, 146, 147, 171 
Spangenberg, 170-172, 180, 182, 189 
Spener, 15, 22, 24, 38, 100, 168 
Spotswood, Governor, 76, 77, 232 
Sprogel, 34, 55 
Staatsbote, 165, 166, 221-223, 241, 

248 
Stamp Act, 186, 212, 222, 275 
Stedmans, 216 
Steiner & Cist, 166, 241 
Steuben, Baron, 241, 270-274 
Steuben, Frederick William, 274 
Steuben, Jonathan, 273, 274 
Stiegel, " Baron." 232, 271 
Stone, Arabia, 86 



312 



Index 



Stoner, 278-280 

Stony Point, 272 

Stover, 295, 296 

Strader, 278 

Strasburg (Virginia), 115, 149, 159 

Stiimpel, 128 

Stump family, 280 

Sullivan, General, 221, 246 

Sunbury, 199 

Susquehanna, 86, 87, 114, 115, 118, 

188, 193 
Swabia, 17 
Swift, 70 
Switzerland, 25, 27, 93, 94, 121, 138, 

238 

Taneytown, 118 

Tannebergers, the, 233 

Tarleton, 257, 280 

Tauler, 12, 13, 105 

Teedyuscing, 196 

Tennessee, 240, 277, 279, 280, 297 

Tersteegan, 12, 15, 47 

" Theologia Germanica," 12 

Thornton, 221 

Transylvania, 280 

Trenton, 246 

Treutlen, 237 

Triebner, 237, 238 

Tulpehocken, 87, 89, 90, 114, 188, 

191, 230 
Tuscarawas, 291 
Tuscarora Indians, 73, 75 
Tyrol, 142, 144 

Ulmer, in, 132-134, 139, 235 
Urlsperger, 144 
Urlsperger reports, 128 

Valley Forge, 246, 271, 272, 274 

Van Braght, 164 

Van Rensselaer, 264 

Van Sommelsdyk family, 37, 38, 

41 
Vincennes, 281, 282, 297 
Virginia, 76, 77, 103, 112, 116, 119, 

155, 181, 183-185, 188, 190, 200, 

211, 221, 231, 239, 245, 267-270, 

284, 288 
Virginia, Valley of, 115, 149, 150, 

159, 180, 200, 267, 269, 277, 281, 

297 

Wachovia, 179, 180, 236 
Waldenses, 13, 19, 26 
Waldo, General, 130-133, 138, 216 
Waldo, Samuel, 134 



Waldoboro, in, 130, 135, 138, 140, 

141, 235,236 
War Civil, no 
War, French and Indian, 137, 191- 

207, 211, 230, 236, 247, 258 
War of the Spanish Succession, 17, 

20, 58, 61 
War, Peasant's, 27, 228 
War, Seven Years', 17 
War, Spanish-American, 138 
War, Thirty Years', 11, 14, 17, 

106 
Washington, Colonel, 257, 280 
Washington, George, 112, 190, 246, 

247, 249, 250, 253, 254, 268, 271, 

276 
Wayne, General, 229 
Weber heresy, 127 
Weedon (von der Wieden), 270 
Weiser, Conrad, 6, 84, 87, loi, 152, 

186-198, 204, 297 
Weiser, the elder, 82, 84, 85, 87, 88, 

152, 225 
Weissenfels, Catharine (Lady 

Johnson), 224, 225, 260 
Weissenfels, Colonel, 206 
Weitzel, 194 
Weltner, 255, 256 
Weslev, 78, 146, 171 
West Camp, 81 
Wetterholt, 194 
Wetzel, 2S6, 287 
Weyberg, 242 
Wheating, 268 
White Mountains, 138 
Whitefield, 171-173, 179, 192 
Whittier, 30, 46, 80 
Wilderness Trace, 277 
William of Orange, 27 
Williamson, 292-295 
Willing, Anne, 207 
Winchester, 115, 149, 159, 200, 268 
Wind Gap, 195 
Wissahickon, Hermits of, 54, 103, 

296 (see ' 'Woman in the Wilder- 
ness") 
Witt, Dr., 49, 51 
Wittmann, 254 
Wolfe, 208 
Wolmesdorf, 197 
"Woman in the Wilderness," 32, 

42-51 
Woodstock, 115, 150, 159, 202,269 
"Wreck of the Palatine," 80 
Wiirtemberg, 17, 20, 21, 42-44, 61, 

62, 131, 132, 149, 217 
Wyoming, 176, 189 



313 



^ 



Index 



Yadkin (river), i8o, i8i 
York, 115, 159, 271 
Yorktown, 269, 270, 297 

Zauberbiihler, Bartholomew, 124- 

125, 127, 216 
Zauberbiihler, Sebastian, 130, 131, 

133, 134, 216 
Zeisberger, 291 






Zenger, 80, 225-227, 233 „y y a 
Zenger, Cathrine, 233 f-i-^r ^ ^. 
Zimmerman (organ-builder), 233 
Zimmennan, 42, 43 
Zinzendorf, 50, 108, 157, 16S-170, 

173-176, 178, 180, 183, 189 
Ziibli (or Zubly), 147, 238 
Zwingli, 13 



THE END 



314 



